THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  FRENCH  MIRACLE 

AND 

FRENCH  CIVILISATION 


THE  FRENCH  MIRACLE 

AND 

FRENCH  CIVILISATION 


TWO  ESSAYS 


BY 

VICTOR  GIRAUD 

SECRETARY    OF    LA   REVUE    DES    DEUX    MONDES 


TRANSLATED    BY 

H.  P.  THIEME  AND  W.  A.  MCLAUGHLIN 

OF    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    MICHIGAN 


PUBLISHED    UNDER     THE    AUSPICES    OF 

THE    DEPARTMENT    OF    ROMANCE    LANGUAGES 

OF    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    MICHIGAN 


1=117 


The  Ann  Arbor  Press 
Ann    Arbor.  Michigan 


D 


TO  THE  MEMORY   OF  THE  TEACHERS 

OF    FRANCE 
SCHOLARS  AND  PATRIOTS  ALL 
WHO   DIED  IN  THE  GREAT  WAR 
THAT  MANKIND  MIGHT  LIVE 
IN  JUSTICE  FREEDOM  AND   PEACE 
WE  DEDICATE  THE  TRANSLATION 
OF  THESE  TWO  ESSAYS 
WHEREIN  ARE  RECORDED 
THEIR  VALOR  AND  THEIR  SPIRIT 
AND  THE  IDEALS    DEVOTION  TO  WHICH 
FORMED  THEIR   SUPREME    INSPIRATION 


887470 


PREFACE 

Victor  Giraud,  the  author  of  the  two  essays  con- 
tained in  this  volume,  was  born  November  26,  1868, 
at  Macon,  France,  famous  as  the  birthplace  of 
Lamartine,  the  kindly,  friendly,  human  author  of 
the  Meditations,  the  vigorous  and  patriotic  ex- 
ponent of  liberalism,  the  poet-statesman  of  the  Re- 
public of  1848.  It  was  at  the  Lycee  Lamartine  in 
his  native  town  that  Victor  Giraud  spent  his  youth- 
ful years  of  study  preparatory  to  going  to  Paris, 
where  he  later  entered  the  famous  Lycee  Henri  IV. 
In  the  early  nineties  he  was  a  pupil  at  the  Ecole 
Normale  Superieure,  that  justly  renowned  insti- 
tution on  the  Rue  d'Ulm  wherein  the  intellectual 
elite  of  each  generation  is  trained  under  the  best  of 
masters  as  scholars  and  cultivated  men,  for  their  life 
work  as  teachers  and  guides  to  the  youth  of  the  na- 
tion in  the  Lycees  and  Universities.  Here  he  came 
under  the  happy  influence  of  the  great  Brunetiere 
"who,  confronted  by  a  type  of  criticism  too  exclu- 
sively philological  or  too  minute,  maintained  the  in- 
alienable rights  which  may  be  justly  claimed  by 
ideas  and  intelligence."  Rrunetiere  was  his  master 
and  friend  whose  secret  wish  was  that  some  day  his 
pupil  might  write  "the  history  of  his  thought  and 
writings."  In  1894  Victor  Giraud  won  his  title  of 
agrege  des  lettrcs  and  forthwith  went  to  the  Univer- 


6  PREPACK 

sity  of  Fribourg,  Switzerland,  where  for  several 
years  he  held  the  professorship  of  Modern  French 
Literature.  In  1897  he  took  as  the  subject  of  one  of 
his  courses — Taine,  his  works  and  influence.  This 
was  the  outgrowth  of  work  begun  six  years  before 
while  he  was  a  pupil  at  the  Ecole  Normale  and 
had  received  the  kindly  consideration  of  Taine 
himself.  These  lectures  were  published  in  1901  as 
an  Essay  on  Taine  and  were  awarded  the  Bordin 
prize  by  the  French  Academy.  A  year  after  ap- 
peared his  Critical  Bibliography  of  Taine. 

Taine  was  not  the  only  author  whose  life  and 
works  and  influence  held  the  interest  of  the 
young  professor.  In  the  summer  of  1898  he  gave 
a  course  on  Pascal,  the  notes  of  which  were 
published  as  Pascal,  Vhommc,  Voeuvre.  et  Vinflu* 
cnce,  1898,  disclosing  the  marked  influence  of 
Brunetiere's  method.  The  work  was  crowned  by 
the  Academy.  When  he  published  his :  Pascal : 
Etudes  d'histoire  morale,  1901.  the  Academy  award- 
ed it  the  first  Bordin  prize.  In  the  preface  of  this 
work  he  writes:  "For  twenty  years  Pascal  has 
been  my  almost  constant  companion  and  I  could 
never  express  the  profit,  intellectual  and  other, 
which  I  feel  I  have  derived  from  this  companion- 
ship. Of  all  the  influences  that  I  have  undergone 
that  of  Pascal  is  certainly  the  one  which  began  the 
earliest,  has  been  the  least  interrupted,  and  remained 
the  most  profound,  an  influence  not  only  undergone, 
but  sought  after,  desired,  and  loved." 


PREFACE  7 

A  third  great  name  and  influence  in  French  liter- 
ature owes  much  to  the  active  pen  and  indefatigable 
mind  of  M.  Giraud,  for  his  Studies  on  Chateaubri- 
and, 1904,  1912,  are  but  a  foretaste  and  promise  of  a 
work  announced  in  preparation  on  the  Religion  of 
Chateaubriand :  origins,  evolution  and  influence — a 
critical  study  in  the  history  of  religious  ideas  in  the 
French  literature  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 

The  present,  also,  has  furnished  an  attractive  field 
for  the  fruitful  pursuit  of  his  quest :  the  discovery, 
exposition,  and  criticism  of  the  dominant  ideas  of 
the  age  as  expressed  in  literature  by  the  master 
minds  who  have  exerted  great  influence  on  the  gen- 
eration which  is  to-day  in  full  activity.  The  Mast- 
ers of  Yesterday  and  To-day  (Les  Maitres  d'hier 
et  d'aujourd'hui,  1912,  and  Les  Maitres  de  I'heure, 
2  vols.,  191 1,  1914)  were  crowned  by  the  Academy 
and  awarded  the  first  prize  of  the  Academy.  These 
essays  treat  with  method,  precision,  and  wonderful 
acumen,  the  lives,  works  and  influence  of  the  most 
important  literary  critics  and  novelists,  poets  and 
historians  of  the  present  day  or  the  immediate 
past.  Keenly  interested  in  life  with  all  its  prob- 
lems, particularly  those  dealing  with  religion  and 
morals,  M.  Giraud  has  written  many  essays,  such 
as  those  collected  in  Rooks  and  Questions  of 
the  Day  (Livres  et  Questions  d'Aujonrd'hui,  T906) 
Anticliricalisme  et  catholicisme,  1906.  Ferdinand 
Brunetiere,   1907.     He-  has  edited  the  Pensees  of 


8  PREFACE 

Pascal,  and  selections  from  his  other  works;  Pen- 
sees,  Reflexions,  Maximes  from  Chateaubriand's 
works ;  the  Pensees  of  Joubert ;  Pensees  selected 
from  the  works  of  Bossuet,  and  many  other  books. 
All  these  works  clearly  indicate  the  variety,  the 
unity  of  interest  and  method  characteristic  of  the 
subject  of  this  sketch.  He  stands  to-day  one  of  the 
acknowledged  masters  of  the  art  so  eminently 
French :  fruitful,  helpful,  suggestive  criticism,  the 
outcome  of  clear  thinking,  exact  knowledge,  com- 
bined with  clarity  of  expression  and  felicity  of 
phrase,  lightness  of  touch  and  accuracy  of  thrust, 
and  a  wide,  but  definite  view  of  general  ideas,  de- 
rived from  an  intimate,  refined  knowledge  of  the 
relations  of  man,  his  thoughts  and  his  actions.  His 
own  view  of  criticism  he  once  expressed  as  follows : 
"I  never  had  much  faith  in  what  we  were  wont  to 
call,  in  days  gone  by,  scientific  criticism  and  my 
faith  is  growing  less  and  less  ....  Real  criticism 
will  always  remain  what  it  has  always  been,  the 
free,  living  testimony  of  one  mind  regarding  an- 
other, of  one  soul  regarding  another  soul,  homo 
additus  libris.  This  most  certainly  does  not  mean, 
however,  that  it  may  not  contain  a  large  share,  and 
in  increasing  amount,  I  do  not  wish  to  say  of  sci- 
ence (science),  but  rather  of  knowledge  (connais- 
sance)  ;  that  is,  precise  and  positive  information  and 
objective,  impersonal  investigation."  (Nouvellcs 
Etudes  sur  Chateaubriand). 


PREFACE  9 

The  following  two  essays  appeared  in  the  oldest 
and  most  important  French  literary  organ  La  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes,  of  which  M.  Giraud  has  heen  for 
some  time  the  secretary.  The  French  Miracle  was 
first  published  in  the  April  number,  1915, — and  later 
in  book  form  together  with  other  essays  in  191 5  ;  the 
Civilisation  Francaise,  an  essay  on  French  Civilisa- 
tion appeared  in  1917  and  won  the  Prix  d'Blo- 
quencc,  awarded  by  the  Academy — it  was  later  pub- 
lished separately  and  dedicated  to  the  memory  of 
Pierre  Maurice  Masson,  a  Professor  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Fribourg,  a  lieutenant  in  the  infantry,  who 
fell  April  16,  1916,  "in  defense  of  the  soil  of  Lor- 
raine and  French  civilisation.''  In  June,  1916,  in 
the  Sorbonne  a  posthumous  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Letters  was  conferred  upon  M.  Masson  for  his  re- 
markable thesis  on  Tean  Jacques  Rousseau,  the 
proof  of  which  he  corrected  in  the  trenches. 

Tt  has  been  a  general  belief  held  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  by  those  who  knew  France,  that  on 
the  outcome  of  the  war  depended  the  whole  future  of 
French  civilization  and  consequently  of  all  civiliza- 
tion. Our  own  President  but  lately,  in  that  address 
which  stands  beyond  praise,  expressed  those  ideals 
of  justice,  of  right  and  humanity  upon  which  our 
national  life  depends  and  upon  which  the  exist- 
ence of  all  free  peoples  can  alone  thrive.  These  are 
the  ideals  expressed  by  M.  Giraud  in  these  essays 
and  in  more  than  one  passage  the  reader  will  be 
reminded  of  the  loftv  words  of  our  own  President 


IO  PREFACE 

and  the  high  ideals  he  so  admirably  expressed.  It 
is  in  the  hope  that  this  community  of  ideals  may 
be  more  clearly  understood  and  our  debt  to  France, 
our  moral  debt  especially,  be  more  keenly  appre- 
ciated, that  these  essays  are  presented  in  this  coun- 
try to  a  wider  public  than  that  which  they  might 
reach  in  their  original  form. 

The  translators  are  painfully  aware  that  transla- 
tions are  not  infrequently  treacherous,  traducing 
rather  than  transferring  the  thought ;  their  one 
hope,  however,  is  that  in  turning  these  essays  into 
their  mother  tongue  they  may  have  done  so  without 
violating  her  genius,  and  yet,  may  have  succeeded 
in  preserving  some  slight  traces  of  the  charm,  the 
warmth,  and  the  vigor  of  the  original. 


THE  FRENCH  MIRACLE 

Lest  we  forget.  It  is  the  story  of  yesterday  and 
yet  it  seems  the  story  of  ages  ago  .... 

But  just  when  I  recall  to  mind  this  story,  when  I 
attempt  to  state  precisely  the  principal  features  of 
our  moral,  political  and  social  situation  immediately 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  between  the  general 
elections  in  May  and  the  thunderbolt  which  fell 
upon  us  in  August,  my  pen  wavers  and  I  stop  to  re- 
flect. God  forbid  that  we  should  revive  our  old  dif- 
ferences and  disturb  the  truce  that  all  the  parties 
have  made — the  "sacred  union"  of  the  present  mo- 
ment. But  the  memory  of  these  lingers  in  the 
minds  of  all  and  we  need  only  allude  to  them.  The 
least  we  can  say  is  that  we  were  thoroughly  divided 
ten  months  ago.  Our  minds  were  perplexed,  our 
consciences  beclouded,  our  passions  given  free  rein, 
and  our  evil  fate  did  not  spare  us  even  those  scand- 
als which  mark  the  end  of  a  regime,  like  a  symptom 
full  of  evil  omen.  Pessimists  called  it  decadence. 
Optimists,  those  who,  during  the  two  preceding 
years,  had  thought  they  saw  rising  the  dawn  of  a 
new  France  and  had  hailed  the  birth  of  a  new 
spirit,  wondered  whether  they  were  not  mistaken 
or  whether  they  should  not  wait  for  another  gen- 
eration before  resuming  their  uncertain  and  timid 
hope. 


12  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

Suddenly  in  this  corrupt,  troubled  and  stormy  at- 
mosphere, like  a  thunderbolt  the  war  burst  forth. 
And  immediately  a  new  France  appeared :  a  France 
united,  proud  without  bravado,  calm  and  serious, 
the  very  one  we  had  built  up  in  our  dreams  and 
which  we  had  almost  despaired  of  ever  seeing  with 
our  mortal  eyes;  a  France  which  accepted  with- 
out a  murmur  her  fate  as  though  for  forty  years 
she  had  been  dreading  this  tragic  day  and  had 
been  preparing  for  it  in  silence.  In  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye,  all  the  pettiness  of  days  gone  by  was 
forgotten  and  sunk  deep  in  the  past.  To  the  pro- 
found astonishment  of  our  enemies,  even  of  our 
friends,  and  we  must  confess,  to  our  own  aston- 
ishment, all  our  dissensions  vanished.  The  de- 
plorable murder  of  an  eloquent  socialist  orator 
(Jaures)  did  not  succeed  in  disturbing  even  for  a 
moment  that  union  which  had  sprung  up  so  sud- 
denly. The  Chamber  of  Deputies  had  immediately 
risen  above  itself,  and  in  a  session  never-to-be-for- 
gotten, gave  an  example  of  concord,  of  patriotic 
wisdom  and  dignity  which  thrilled  the  hearts  of  all. 
The  political  leaders  spoke  the  precise,  strong  and 
sober  words  which  should  be  spoken,  and  their  sim- 
ple, terse  and  vigorous  eloquence,  worthy  of  the 
fairest  days  of  Athens,  was  the  finest  homage  that 
could  be  given  the  cause  they  were  defending.  So- 
cialists, Conservatives,  Monarchists  and  Republi- 
cans, representatives  of  every  political  theory; 
Catholics,  Freethinkers,  Israelites,  Protestants,  be- 
lievers   in    every   type    of   philosophy   or   religion ; 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLK  13 

noble  and  peasant,  business  man  and  workingman, 
all  groups  of  society,  were  united,  melted  into  one, 
lifted  up  and  carried  away,  inspired  by  the  same  im- 
pulse. One  feeling  and  one  alone,  one  single 
thought  swayed  the  mind  of  every  Frenchman. 
Why  did  we  think,  even  yesterday,  of  France  as 
divided  ?  There  is  but  one  France,  the  France  that 
lives  forever,  thoroughly  unified  and  completely 
united  against  the  brutal  aggressor.  Never  at  any 
period  in  our  history  was  our  spiritual  unity  so  com- 
plete, so  profound,  so  intimate  as  on  the  morrow  of 
the  day  when  it  seemed  most  imperilled. 

How  shall  we  explain  that  astounding  change, 
that  spontaneous  springing  up  of  a  great  common 
and  national  spirit,  that  sudden  transfiguration  of 
a  whole  people  which  we  even  yet  behold  in  aston- 
ishment and  wonder?  Cold  reason  may  not  suffice  ; 
but  it  can  account  for  certain  aspects  of  this 
phenomenon. 

That  the  conservative  elements  of  French  public 
opinion  should  welcome  in  a  manly  and  firm  manner 
the  prospect  of  a  European  War  should  occasion 
no  surprise.  French  Conservatives  have,  no  doubt, 
their  faults ;  but  no  one  has  been  able  seriously  to 
challenge  the  sincerity  and  restless  vigilance  of  their 
patriotism ;  had  they  been  more  frequently  heeded 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  France  in  IQ14  would 
have  been  better  prepared  for  the  struggle.  Many 
of  them  expected  a  war  sooner  or  later ;  some  could 
not  tell  whether  they  should  hope  for  Avar  or  fear  it ; 
almost  all  prepared  for  it  and  also  tried  to  prepare 


14  THE    FRENCH    MIRACEE 

public  opinion  for  it.  All,  in  any  case,  thoroughly 
convinced  that  a  nation,  according'  to  Renan's  pro- 
found expression  is  above  all  "une  creation  mili- 
taire,"  and  deploring  the  fact  that  France  no  longer 
played  the  glorious  role  she  formerly  played  in  the 
world,  put  their  supreme  hope  and  their  supreme 
thought  in  the  army  and  counted  upon  it  with  every 
hope  of  victory,  when  the  hour  of  national  awaken- 
ing should  come.  Royalists,  Konapartists,  Nation- 
alists, Progressists,  Liberals,  followers  of  tradition 
of  every  shade  of  political  opinion  deserve  no  special 
credit  for  immediately  rallying  to  the  colors ;  they 
deserve  far  greater  credit  for  having  immediately 
put  aside  the  slight  differences  or  serious  diverg- 
ences which  separated  them  one  from  the  other, 
and  still  more  from  those  at  the  head  of  affairs, 
and  for  having  unhesitatingly  taken  their  stand 
around  the  representatives  of  a  regime,  the  ways 
and  methods  of  which  they  rejected  and  against 
which  even  yesterday  they  fought  with  might  and 
main.  We  are  willing  to  believe  that  their  oppon- 
ents in  similar  circumstances  would  have  given 
proof  of  a  like  spirit  of  unselfishness. 

For  those  who  called  themselves  "rcpublicains  de 
gauche"  radicals  or  radical-socialists  the  sacrifice 
was  greater.  How  many  of  these  proud  descend- 
ants of  the  great  ancestors  of  '93  had  gradually 
drifted  to  the  guileless  fancies  of  pacifism,  ranted 
against  war,  denounced  the  dangers  of  Nationalism 
and  Militarism,  protested  against  our  colonial  ex- 
pansion, believed  in  the  possibility  of  a  friendly  un- 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE  15 

derstanding  with  Germany,  condemned  the  idea  of 
revanche,  and  secretly  in  their  hearts  had  surrender- 
ed onr  two  lost  provinces ! 

How  many  had  rashly  cut  down  the  military  bud- 
get, and  even  among  those  who  became  resigned  to 
the  three  year  service  law,  how  many  were  prepar- 
ing as  soon  as  the  opportunity  should  present  itself, 
to  undo  what  they  had  done?  How  many,  finally, 
had  in  a  thousand  and  one  instances,  shown  a  lack  of 
confidence  in  the  army  or  even  open  hostility  to  it, 
both  ridiculous  and  dangerous  as  if  every  general 
had  in  him  the  making  of  a  Bonaparte !  All  this  pre- 
judice, all  this  bias,  hanging  like  clouds  over  our 
minds  was  swept  away  forever  by  the  hurricane 
from  the  East.  The  spirit  of  grace  breathed  upon 
these  apologists  of  the  civil  power  and  they  awoke 
fervent  patriots ;  they  donned  their  uniforms,  they 
submitted  to  the  hard  demands  of  discipline ;  deep  in 
their  hearts  was  revealed  once  more  that  spirit 
which  animated  the  Volunteers  of  '92.  And,  indeed, 
the  sight  of  their  political  friends  wrestling,  in  these 
grave  circumstances,  with  the  difficulties  and  re- 
sponsibilities of  power,  has  in  no  wise  weakened 
their  sudden  conversion.  But  after  all  they  are  con- 
verted and  we  can  ask  no  more. 

A  conversion  which  should  offer,  it  would  seem, 
more  difficulties  but  which  took  place  nevertheless, 
is  that  of  the  various  socialist  and  revolutionary 
groups.  Let  us  admit  this :  when  the  first  rumors 
of  war  began  to  circulate  it  was  towards  the  Gener- 


l6  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

al  Confederation  of  Labor  that  all  eyes  were  turned 
in  the  greatest  apprehension.  That  our  fear  was  un- 
founded was  proved  by  the  outcome.  But  among 
the  workingmen  the  gospel  according  to  Marx  had 
made  so  many  converts ;  we  had  heard  so  often  and 
so  much  about  the  class  war,  about  the  "Internation- 
al," about  the  claims  of  the  proletariat  and  about 
the  general  strike.  The  war  against  war  had  been 
so  often  declared ;  Socialists  and  Revolutionists  had 
cried  out  against  the  bourgeois  social  system  and 
the  prejudice  that  patriotism  arouses.  They  had 
threatened  so  often  to  prevent  mobilization  by  viol- 
ence, to  fire  upon  their  officers,  to  disorganize  na- 
tional defense.  And  they  professed  a  blind  belief 
in  social  democracy.  We  may  rest  assured  that  our 
enemy,  for  they  have  shouted  it  from  the  housetops, 
counted  on  Jaures  to  provoke  another  uprising,  a 
second  Commune.  Like  many  others,  this  dream 
did  not  come  true.  Our  Socialists  did  their  full 
duty,  as  the  German  Socialists  did  theirs.  Less 
logical  than  ours,  and  especially  less  frank,  in  any 
case  under  greater  official  pressure,  the  latter,  we 
know  so  to-day,  carefully  avoided  the  offer  of  a 
friendly  understanding  between  the  laboring  class  of 
both  countries  with  a  view  to  making  the  war  im- 
possible. That  action  opened  the  eyes  of  the 
French  "comrades."  They  realized  that  they  had 
been  deceived,  and  that  to  persevere  in  their  revolu- 
tionary theories  and  fancies,  would  simply  be  playing 
the  game  of  warlike  and  militaristic  Germany.  Quite 
convinced,  moreover,  that  France  had  not  wished 


THE    FRENCH    MJRACEE  1 7 

the  war  and  that  she  had  done  everything  to  avoid  it, 
they  became  convinced  that  to  fight  valiantly  for 
her,  was  to  fight  for  their  own  ideals,  was  to  pre- 
pare the  coming  of  perpetual  peace  and  of  the 
German  Republic.  Reassured  as  to  the  principles 
involved,  they  made  ready  to  take  up  arms  against 
the  common  enemy  with  as  much  serenity  and  en- 
thusiasm as  the  most  ardent  Nationalist. 

We  can  now  easily  picture  to  ourselves  the  diverse 
reasons  which  impelled  the  various  parties  which 
are  striving  to  mould  public  opinion  in  France  to- 
day, to  rush  unhesitatingly  in  one  impetuous  sweep 
to  the  defense  of  the  frontier  in  danger.  Some  took 
up  arms  to  defend  the  France  of  long  ago,  the 
France  of  the  Crusades,  of  St.  Louis,  of  Joan  of 
Arc,  France  "the  Eldest  Daughter  of  the  Church," 
whose  mission  is  far  from  being  fulfilled.  Others 
took  up  arms  for  rationalistic  and  free-thinking 
France,  the  land  of  Voltaire  and  Diderot.  Others, 
finally,  fought  for  France  the  home  of  democracy 
and  equality,  the  France  of  the  Revolution,  the  land 
par  excellence  of  social  rights  and  political  liberties. 
And  all,  instinctively,  without  any  abstract  theor- 
ies, set  out  for  the  defense  of  France.  Simply  be- 
cause it  was  France,  the  sweet;,  motherly  land,  their 
own  native  land,  the  land  of  their  ancestors,  the 
sacred  spot  of  ground  where  their  dead  lie  buried, 
where  they  themselves  were  born,  where  they  lisped 
their  first  words,  the  land  whose  familiar  horizons 
charmed  their  first  ga/e,  mingled  with  all  their  joys 
and  all  their  griefs,  and  because  they  could  no  long- 


18  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

er  live,  if  these  fields,  these  woods,  these  cities 
which  their  ancestors  had  founded  should  fall  into 
the  hands  of  men  of  another  race,  coarse  in  man- 
ners, rude  in  speech,  heavy  and  befogged  in  mind 
and  vague  in  thought.  And  all  this  is  true ;  all  these 
explanations  are  correct  and  they  must  be  given. 
But,  that  all  these  causes,  apparent  or  deep- 
seated,  which  brought  about  French  unanimity, 
should  work  together,  that  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  they  should  make  a  nation,  but  yesterday 
so  divided,  the  least  disciplined  and  at  times  the 
most  anarchistic,  a  compact,  intangible  mass  show- 
ing no  signs  of  past  division ;  that  we  should  see  this 
sacred  union  of  minds,  wills  and  hearts  established, 
that  before  our  eyes,  as  though  by  a  sudden  chem- 
ical reaction,  a  sort  of  sudden  crystallization  of  the 
soul  of  France  should  come  about,  a  thing  which 
goes  bevond  and  confounds  our  rational  faculties, 
in  all  that  I  see  the  first  French  miracle. 

TT. 

And  there  are  other  miracles.  First  and  foremost 
must  be  placed  the  international  and  diplomatic  sit- 
uation of  the  conflict.  Tndeed  it  was  better  than  we 
could  have  hoped  for  and  such  that  we  have  had  no 
reason  to  regret  having  waited  patiently  forty-four 
years  for  the  hour  of  fate.  When  the  world  knows 
in  detail  the  diplomatic  history  of  these  forty-four 
years  it   will  know   what   forbearance,   self-efface- 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  19 

ment,  self-possession,  and  stoic  resignation  France 
had  to  possess' in  order  to  resist  the  threats,  the  in- 
cessant provocations  of  German  brutality.  Mention- 
ing only  such  facts  as  are  universally  known,  no 
one  can  reproach  our  country  with  having  sought 
eagerly  an  opportunity  for  revanche.  Willingly, 
systematically  so  that  the  world  might  not  accuse  us 
of  disturbing  the  peace  of  the  world  to  satisfy  any 
national  rancour  we  might  feel,  we  were  ready  to 
make  every  concession  compatible  with  our  dignity, 
each  time  there  arose  between  Germany  and  our- 
selves a  question  that  was  purely  personal.  If  war 
finally  broke  out,  it  is  because  Germany  declared 
war  against  us.  And  if  we  made  up  our  minds  so 
promptly  as  to  what  we  were  to  do,  it  was  first  of  all 
because  it  was  a  question  of  not  allowing  a  small 
heroic  people  to  be  crushed  by  an  empire  drunk  with 
ambition  and  devoid  of  any  scruple.  Consequently, 
without  am-  seeking  on  our  part,  France  appeared 
in  the  eyes  of  all  in  the  very  attitude  which  could 
most  harmonize  with  her  ancient  traditions :  she 
was  a  victim  because  she  was  attempting  to  set  an- 
other free;  she  was  attacked  because  she  had  been 
unwilling  to  allow  the  commission  of  an  act  of  in- 
ternational injustice. 

This  noble  attitude  had  its  immediate  reward. 
Russia,  which  the  Germans  by  their  bungling  policy 
had  so  completely  succeeded  in  throwing  into  our 
arms,  Russia,  whose  just  cause  we  were  espousing, 
was  going  to  use  all  her  strength  in  the  service  of 
our  common  interests.     Italy  under  other  circum- 


20  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

stances  might  have  given  us  reason  to  fear  on  ac- 
count of  her  obligations  to  the  Central  Powers ;  but 
our  adversaries  in  dealing  with  Italy  exhibited  a 
lack  of  frankness  and  tact ;  consequently,  she  de- 
clared herself  neutral  and  very  soon  after  affirmed 
that  this  neutrality  could  be  for  her  only  a  provision- 
al attitude.  There  remained  England  which  in  truth 
for  the  past  ten  years  had  been  drawing  closer  to 
us  in  a  very  cordial  manner  and  whose  general  in- 
terests were  clearly  identical  with  our  own.  But 
England,  pacifist  by  instinct,  a  prey  to  serious  in- 
ternal disorders  and  moreover  quite  open  to  German 
influence,  was  divided  against  herself.  The  fate  of 
Servia  was  for  her  an  object  of  very  remote  con- 
cern. The  hateful  violation  of  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium  put  an  end  to  her  hesitation.  English  loy- 
alty and  English  interests  happened  to  coincide  and 
England  in  her  anger  inflicted  upon  Germany  a  sur- 
prise from  which  she  has  not  yet  recovered.  By 
her  duplicity,  by  her  violence,  by  her  lack  of  fore- 
sight, Germany  herself  completed  the  "encircling" 
which  she  had  long  been  dreading  as  the  greatest  of 
misfortunes.  France,  on  the  contrary,  by  her  loyal- 
ty, her  prudence,  and  the  generous  spirit  of  her 
methods,  thanks  also  to  the  skill  of  her  diplomats, 
was  in  a  moral  and  material  position  perhaps  unique 
in  the  whole  course  of  her  history.  The  situation 
which  ended  in  the  fall  of  Napoleon  was  now,  a 
hundred  years  later,  reversed,  and  in  favor  of 
France.  While  her  implacable  enemy  was  being  de- 
serted, alliances  were  coming  to  her.    And  by  a  real 


TIIK    FRENCH    MIRACLE  21 

symbolical  coincidence,  at  the  very  moment  when 
she  was  defending  the  freedom  of  the  world,  and, 
we  may  say  without  boasting,  the  cause  of  Christian 
civilization,  she  was  at  the  same  time  fighting  for 
her  own  existence,  for  the  future  of  her  own  gen- 
ius, and  for  the  hope  of  reparation,  which  for  nearly 
half  a  century  she  had  been  jealously  treasuring  in 
her  heart. 

To  maintain  this  role,  to  fulfill  such  a  mission  and 
not  be  crushed  thereby,  to  justify  also  so  much  hope 
and  deserve  such  confidence,  material  strength  and 
power  of  soul  were  necessary,  of  which  many,  even 
among  our  friends,  did  not  believe  France  entirely 
capable.  They  knew  her  to  be  insufficiently  pre- 
pared, courageous  to  be  sure,  but  nervous,  quick  to 
be  disillusioned,  more  capable  of  enthusiasm  than 
endurance.  And  they  knew  that  the  adversary  was 
formidable,  admirably  equipped  and  that  for  forty 
years  he  had  been  training  for  this  war  which  he 
had  let  loose.  They  knew  that  he  would  be  the 
more  violent  and  the  more  pitiless  because,  while 
feeling  himself  threatened  in  his  very  existence, 
anxious  about  the  future,  he  had  suffered  disap- 
pointments in  diplomacy  which  had  ruffled  his  pride 
and  shaken  his  security.  They  knew  in  short  that 
eager  to  accomplish  his  purpose  and  forced  to  strike, 
at  the  very  first,  blows  that  would  be  decisive,  he 
would  turn  almost  all  his  efforts  against  France, 
which  was  to  be  crushed  and  conquered  at  any  cost 
within  a  few  weeks. 


22  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

Let  us  recall  to  mind  the  telling  article  in  the  Lon- 
don Times  :  "There  were  days  and  days  during  the 
swift  German  advance  when  we  feared  that  the 
French  armies  were  no  match  for  the  German,  that 
Germany  would  be  conquered  on  the  seas  and  from 
her  eastern  frontier  and  that  after  the  war  France 
would  remain  a  power  only  through  the  support  of 
her  Allies."  Our  friends  might  have  been  still 
more  anxious  in  their  fear  had  they  known  as  we 
are  beginning  to  know  now  all  the  mysterious  de- 
tails of  the  extraordinary  preparedness  of  the  Ger- 
mans, all  the  infinite  resources  our  enemy  possessed 
in  men.  in  war  material,  in  spies,  particularly  per- 
haps in  spies,  their  wonderful  genius  for  organiza- 
tion, their  absolute  lack  of  scruple,  their  faith  in 
their  superiority  in  all  things,  exulting  in  the  un- 
failing success  of  their  arms.  In  turn  we  now  realize 
the  reasons  for  their  unhealthy  pride,  their  hymns 
of  triumph  before  the  victory,  their  shouts  like 
Barbarians  falling  on  the  spoils ;  between  France 
and  them  the  match  was  not  an  even  one.  All  the 
probabilities,  all  the  chances  were  that  France  would 
be  overwhelmed  by  the  number  of  soldiers,  by  the 
fire  of  shells  lavishly  spent,  by  the  superiority  of 
arms  and  equipment  perfected  according  to  the  very 
last  word  of  science. 

However,  without  excitement,  without  losing  self- 
control,  France  completed  her  final  preparations  for 
war.  This  impressive  calmness,  this  quiet,  serious 
dignity  immediately  inspired  confidence  in  the  most 
pessimistic.     Those  who  have  not  seen  with  their 


TilK    FRENCH    MIRACI.E  23 

own  eyes  the  good  order,  precision  and  rapidity  with 
which  the  mobilisation  was  accomplished,  will  never 
know  how  easily  the  French  temperament  complies 
with  the  requirements  of  method.  1  imagine  the 
numberless  spies  of  Emperor  William  must  have 
been  very  much  surprised  and  if  they  succeeded  in 
getting  truthful  reports  to  their  master  they  must 
have  admitted  in  such  reports  that  things  could  not 
have  gone  off  more  smoothly  even  in  methodical 
Germany.  Personally  I  shall  always  have  before  my 
eyes  a  double  picture  of  the  first  days  of  war.  It 
was  the  second  day  of  mobilisation,  in  a  suburban 
train  which  was  carrying  a  number  of  soldiers  to 
Paris.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  see  their  determination, 
and  their  high  spirits.  At  one  of  the  stations  an 
old  general,  with  a  pure  white  moustache,  boarded 
the  train  and  had  evidently  just  returned  to  duty. 
The  men  outdid  themselves  in  courtesy,  offering  him 
their  seats,  insisting  that  he  sit  down,  but  he  refused 
and  remained  standing  during  the  whole  trip,  en- 
gaging in  conversation.  In  that  tone  of  cordial  and 
familiar  simplicity  which  even  a  German  lieutenant 
could  never  assume  he  carried  on  the  conversation, 
replying  to  the  remarks  of  this  one  and  that  one, 
saying  that  we  did  not  want  the  war,  that  it  was 
forced  upon  us  and  that  each  one  must  do  his  duty, 
that  there  would  be  days  of  trial  when  everybody, 
himself  included,  would  suffer  from  hunger  and 
thirst  and  lack  of  sleep,  but  that  France  was  well 
worth  all  these  sacrifices  ....  And  as  he  talked, 
expressing  the  thought  of  all,  we  experienced  some- 


24  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

thing  like  a  foretaste  of  that  close  and  trustful 
solidarity  which  during  the  war  has  sprung  up  be- 
tween the  French  trooper  and  his  chief  of  which 
we  have  since  had  so  many  examples.  When  the 
train  stopped  there  were  handshakes  and  good  wish- 
es exchanged ;  the  officer  had  won  over  all  his  men ; 
to-morrow,  under  fire,  he  would  be  able  to  lead 
them  anywhere. 

Meanwhile,  a  young  man  came  into  our  compart- 
ment who  had  been  accompanied  thus  far  by  his 
wife,  carrying  a  baby  in  her  arms ;  they  gave  each 
other  one  long  embrace;  the  wife  was  wonderful  in 
her  simplicity  and  calmness ;  not  a  tear ;  in  that 
countenance,  somewhat  pale,  you  could  see  that 
strong,  almost  tragic  determination  not  to  give  way 
to  emotion ;  and  I  shall  never  forget  that  vigorous 
and  tender  way  with  which  she  held  out  the  baby 
to  its  father  for  one  last  kiss.  Ah !  those  Germans 
who  thought  we  were  a  people  whose  end  had  come, 
how  mistaken  they  were  ! 

Who  of  us  has  not  had  impressions  similar  to 
these  which  at  the  very  outset  filled  our  hearts  with 
so  much  hope?  Here  among  many  others  is  one 
of  the  experiences  of  Emile  Faguet : 

"n  Aug.  Trains  are  passing  by  loaded  with  sol- 
diers who  are  going  back  to  their  regiments.  Too 
many  in  my  opinion  are  singing  and  shouting  aloud. 
But  many  of  them  are  quiet  and  determined,  very 
simple  in  manner,  with  a  look  of  decision  in  their 
eyes.  In  short,  they  are  full  of  confidence  them- 
selves, and  inspire  it  in  others.    You  feel  that  they 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE  25 

are  ready  for  anything  and  afraid  of  nothing.  Lord, 
in  their  coarse  linen  tunics  and  their  twilled  trous- 
ers, Lord,  how  handsome  they  are !  Their  speech 
is  not  confused  or  boastful :  'It  won't  be  long,  but 
in  any  case  as  long  as  need  be,'  'When  each  one  is 
sure  of  all  the  others,  it  is  all  right.'  French  good 
sense  and  French  courage  are  in  each  one  of  their 
words.     Brave  fellows !" 

Deceived  by  our  moderation,  our  reserve,  our 
conciliatory  spirit,  during  the  last  forty  years,  the 
Germans  imagined  that  we  would  be  afraid  of  war. 
Once  more  they  were  thoroughly  mistaken. 

They  were  also  greatly  mistaken  with  regard  to  a 
people  extremely  peaceful,  but  very  jealous  of  their 
independence  and  who  had  in  their  past  history  a 
record  of  heroism  of  which  they  were  justly  proud. 
Not  counting  on  certain  complications,  judging  oth- 
ers by  herself,  unaccustomed  to  give  any  weight  to 
the  sentiment  of  honor,  Germany  was  convinced 
that  Belgium  would  not  dare  resist  her,  but  would 
limit  herself  to  making  a  purely  formal  protest. 
But  Belgium  had  a  king  worthy  of  her,  a  king  in 
whose  veins  moreover  flowed  French  blood.  King 
Albert  energetically  declared  that  he  would  defend 
the  neutrality  of  his  country.  Germany  in  her  sur- 
prise and  fury,  checked  in  her  mad  rush  onward, 
took  two  weeks  to  break  that  obstacle,  unforeseen 
and  for  us  providential.  That  was  indeed  for  France 
the  beginning  of  her  salvation.  What  would  have 
happened  if,  on  the  very  first  days  of  the  month  of 
August,   in   the   midst   of   the   mobilisation   of    the 


26  the;  French  miracle 

French  troops,  the  barbarian  horde  crossing  Belgium 
unhindered,  had  been  able  to  come  down  fullweight 
on  our  northern  frontier?  Could  we  have  with- 
stood long  enough  that  first  shock  so  as  to  permit 
our  troops  in  the  interior  to  concentrate  and  bring 
relief?  One  thing  is  certain,  namely,  that  the  Bel- 
gians by  their  wonderful  resistance,  worthy  of  all 
praise,  delayed  the  German  offensive  and  succeeded 
in  stamping  the  "treacherous  blow''  of  our  enemy 
as  a  deed  of  hateful  cowardice,  the  shame  of 
which  they  will  never  be  able  to  wipe  out ;  thus  they 
gave  us  a  new  ally  and  at  the  same  time  a  precious 
breathing  spell,  and  in  contrast  to  our  enemies,  rais- 
ed us  in  the  eyes  of  the  civilised  world,  to  the  most 
desirable  and  the  most  beautiful  moral  position:  as 
the  champion  of  the  right,  keeper  of  a  plighted 
word,  incorruptible  representative  of  eternal  justice. 
In  this  respect  particularly,  history  was  indeed  work- 
ins:  in  the  best  interests  of  France. 


III. 

Still  the  great  question  which  filled  us  with  an- 
guish remained:  Could  France  resist,  without  giv- 
ing way,  the  terrible  onslaught  of  these  three  mil- 
lion men  methodically  trained,  armed  to  the  teeth 
with  the  most  deadly  engines  of  war,  and  aroused 
against  the  hereditary  foe  from  their  childhood,  in 
their  loftiest  feelings  as  well  as  in  their  lowest  in- 
stincts?'  Against  an  adversary  thus  equipped,  valor, 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE  27 

noble-mindedness,  idealism,  are  not  strong  enough 
weapons.  Physical  force  is  needed.  Would  France 
have  that  physical  strength?  She  did  not  have  the 
numbers ;  her  armament  disclosed  serious  gaps ;  she 
was  not  prepared  for  the  type  of  war  which  was 
to  be  waged  against  her.  Fortunately  she  did  have 
a  wonderful  gun,  a  high  command  originally  some- 
what heterogeneous,  but  which  could  easily  become 
of  the  very  first  order;  finally,  an  army  which  had 
faith — faith  in  the  destiny  of  France  and  in  the 
infinite  resources  of  French  genius.  15ut  would  all 
that  be  sufficient?  Our  friends  were  anxious:  M. 
Ferrero,  M.  Seippel,  and  the  eloquent  author  of  the 
article  in  the  London  Times  have  since  admitted  it. 
They  were  justly  frightened  on  our  account  by  the 
size,  by  the  brutality,  by  the  heavy  armor  of  the  Ger- 
man colossus.  It  was  the  fight  between  David  and 
Goliath  over  again.  Who  was  going  to  win?  The 
world  held  its  breath.  Through  the  importance  of 
the  questions  involved,  through  the  enormity  of  the 
forces  engaged,  never  did  a  more  stupendous,  more 
terrible  struggle  arouse  all  mankind. 

After  the  first  few  fortunate  passes,  David  gave 
way  before  his  fearful  adversary.  That  was  the 
battle  of  Charleroi.  The  anxiety  increased  through- 
out the  world.  Would  we  be  able  to  recover  from 
that  repulse?  The  enemy  was  exultant.  He  found 
in  his  triumph  the  justification  for  his  crime.  His 
leaders  had  not  deceived  him.  He  was  going  to 
tread  upon  that  promised  land  whose  riches  his 
chiefs  had  so  often  held  out  before  him.     A   few 


28  THE   FRENCH    MIRACEE 

days  more  and  he  would  be  in  that  Paris  of  which 
he  had  been  dreaming  since  childhood  in  his  un- 
couth way,  the  pillaging  of  which  had  been  held  out 
before  him  to  satisfy  his  hungry  greed.  A  few- 
days  more  and  the  Emperor  would  enter  that  superb 
city  which  had  always  rejected  his  advances  and  the 
humiliation  and  destruction  of  which  he  had  sworn. 
The  sudden  attack  with  which  he  so  often  threat- 
ened us  seemed  about  to  succeed. 

Then  it  was  that  a  great  leader  arose  up  among 
us.  The  Commander  in  Chief  of  the  French  armies 
was  scarcely  known  except  to  his  immediate  col- 
leagues who  appreciated  at  their  real  value  his  abil- 
ity, his  vigor,  his  rough  but  kindly  justice,  and  his 
prodigious  self-control.  With  admirable  clearness 
he  saw  the  situation  in  its  true  light  and  without 
striking  a  blow  he  knew  immediately  what  decision 
had  to  be  made,  however  difficult  it  might  be.  He 
realized  that  the  one  thing  which  had  to  be  saved 
and  maintained  intact  and  free  to  move  was  the 
army  on  which  depended  the  victories  to  come. 
Sacrificing  all  the  generals  who  did  not  measure  up 
to  their  tasks,  sacrificing  a  large  strip  of  national 
territory,  he  retreated.  He  retreated  rapidly,  meth- 
odically, checking  the  enemy  as  he  went  along  and 
inflicting  on  him  bloody  losses,  thus  weakening  him, 
tiring  him,  wearing  him  out  in  every  way,  clearing 
the  way  before  him,  forestalling  his  plans,  making 
good  use  of  his  savage  impatience,  watching  for  bis 
slightest  mistakes,  drawing  him  on  little  by  little,  to 


Tlli:    FRENCH    MIRACLE  20 

the  ground  where  the  light  might  take  place  under 
conditions  most  favorable  to  our  troops.  On  the 
fifth  of  September  these  conditions  were  fulfilled. 
The  command  for  the  offensive  was  given  in  an 
order  for  the  day,  the  manly  and  sober  eloquence  of 
which  will  remain  forever  famous.  France  was  to 
be  saved. 

And  during  this  time  France  showed  that  she 
was  worthy  of  her  soldiers  and  her  leaders.  While 
Northern  and  Eastern  France  accepted  in  trembl- 
ing, but  without  complaint,  the  brutal  invasion, 
Paris,  after  all  precautions  had  been  taken,  remained 
admirable  in  her  quiet  dignity.  Paris  attended  to 
business,  in  a  more  serious  way  to  be  sure  than 
usual,  but  without  excitement,  and  with  that  air  of 
elegant  fearlessness,  which  is  characteristic  of 
French  courage.  Paris  was  waiting.  For  what? 
She  did  not  know.  She  knew  but  one  thing,  namely, 
that  she  would  be  defended  to  the  last.  She  was 
placed  under  a  military  governor,  who  was  one  of 
those  generals  trained  in  the  hard  school  of  our 
colonial  wars,  like  JofFre  and  Lyautey,  men  of 
thought  and  action,  and  who  are  able  to  prepare  for 
battles  and  win  them,  and  at  the  same  time  to  organ- 
ize and  govern  a  country.  A  most  fortunate  choice, 
if  it  is  true  that  the  army  of  Paris  contributed  in 
a  most  definite  manner  to  the  victory  of  the  Marne. 
Paris  was  confident  because  she  was  defended  by 
Gallieni.  But  she  was  prepared  for  anything,  know- 
ing as  she  did  that  the  fortifications  of  her  en- 
trenched camp  were  temporarily  insufficient.     From 


30  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

day  to  day,  from  hour  to  hour  she  listened  attentive- 
ly to  the  boom  of  the  cannon  which  was  not  far 
off.  One  morning  she  learned  that  the  German 
danger  was  passing  away,  and  that  just  as  fifteen 
hundred  years  before,  the  barbarian  hordes  for  no 
apparent  reason,  were  turning  away  from  the  capital 
and  marching  to  the  fatal  meeting  on  the  fields 
around  Chalons.  Paris  was  saved.  Paris  under- 
stood the  mystery  of  her  deliverance  no  more  than 
she  had  that  of  fifteen  centuries  before.  I  dare  say 
that  this  mystery  is  to-day  more  incomprehensible 
than  was  that  of  fifteen  hundred  years  ago.  For  it 
would  be  impossible  to  compare  even  very  superfici- 
ally the  Paris  of  the  days  of  Atilla  with  the  Paris  of 
our  day.  We  are  not  certain  that  it  was  a  mistake 
on  the  part  of  the  king  of  the  Huns  to  have  neglect- 
ed to  take  and  put  to  sack  the  valiant  city  which  was 
to  play  such  a  role  in  the  future,  and  in  any  case  if  it 
was  a  mistake,  it  was  one  which  did  not  compromise 
in  any  way  the  success  of  his  campaign ;  for  it  was 
of  infinitely  greater  importance  for  him  to  take 
Orleans,  the  key  to  the  south,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  was  upon  this  city  that  he  let  loose  his  howl- 
ing pack.  But  what  was  true  of  Atilla  was  not  true 
of  his  present  successor.  To  take  Paris  and  dictate 
peace  to  us,  before  Russia  could  be  ready;  such  was 
the  main  goal  of  Emperor  William,  as  his  gener- 
als had  told  us  sufficiently  often.  That  was  the  only 
reason  for  this  immense  array  of  forces  on  our 
northern  frontier,  for  the  violation  of  Belgian  neu- 
trality,  for  those   forced  marches  of  the  German 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  3 1 

right  wing,  and  certainly  that  was  well  calculated. 
Even  without  the  lure  of  a  government  to  capture, 
a  bank  of  France  to  riile,  Paris  still  remained  a 
very  desirable  prey  for  the  greed  of  those  beyond 
the  Rhine.  Certainly  the  taking  of  Paris  would  not 
mean  the  end  of  France,  nor  the  end  of  the  war,  nor 
final  victory.  We  would  still  have  left  armies, 
money,  allies  and  courage.  But  not  to  mention  the 
great  moral  effect  this  would  produce  on  the  out- 
side world,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  loss  of  our 
capital  would  have  made  it  more  difficult  for  us  to 
win  that  glorious  peace  to  which  we  have  a  right. 
Still  it  is  quite  true  that  Paris  would  not  have  given 
up  without  a  struggle.  But  Paris,  aside  from  her 
army,  was  not  at  that  time  protected  as  she  might 
have  been  and  as  she  should  have  been ;  this  the  Ger- 
mans knew ;  if  they  did  not,  of  what  use  were  their 
armies  of  spies? 

A  swift,  violent  and  sudden  attack,  a  bold  and 
lucky  stroke,  one  of  those  blows  in  which  the  Ger- 
mans do  not  count  human  lives,  might  succeed. 
And  then  the  distant  dream  of  a  German  Caesar 
would  be  realized ;  then  he  would  have  one  of  those 
triumphal  entries  which  had  been  denied  him ;  and 
his  army  of  pillagers  and  incendiaries  would  enjoy 
that  orgy  of  blood  which  had  so  often  been  promised 
them.  And  suddenly  without  anyone  knowing  why, 
that  dream  for  which  they  had  sacrificed  everything, 
vanished  into  thin  air  through  their  own  fault.  All 
of  a  sudden  these  daring  warriors  lose  their  daring, 
hesitate,  retrace  their  steps  and  turn  aside,  and  these 


32  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

conquerors,  of  their  own  volition,  thrust  from  their 
parched  lips  the  enchanted  cup  from  which  they 
were  about  to  drink. 

I  fully  realize  that  in  their  minds  this  was  merely 
postponed,  not  given  up  altogether;  I  know  all  the 
explanations  that  have  been  given  for  this  move- 
ment of  the  German  right  wing,  whereby  General 
Von  Kluck,  exposing  his  flank,  instead  of  marching 
directly  on  to  Paris,  turned  towards  Meaux  and 
Coulommiers.  I  am  willing  to  admit  that  it  might 
seem  imprudent  to  him  to  attempt  an  attack  on 
Paris  without  first  of  all  disposing  of  General  Mau- 
noury's  army  and  the  armies  of  General  Joffre,  which 
were  after  all  still  intact.  But  on  the  one  hand,  in 
a  war  the  success  of  which  might  be  a  question  of 
hours,  this  amounted  to  giving  the  capital  time  to 
complete  and  organize  her  defense ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  in  case  of  a  check,  it  meant  precluding  every 
possibility  of  a  future  offensive  against  the  great  city 
which  was  the  object  of  the  Emperor's  ambition. 
And  T  know  full  well  that  in  their  foolish  pride  the 
Germans  had  no  doubt  about  their  victory.  But 
that  the  enemy's  high  command  should  not  even 
have  considered  the  opposite  possibility,  that  a  gen- 
eral staff  which  even  when  it  is  sure  of  success, 
takes  precaution  against  a  possible  reverse,  should 
have  been  thoughtless  enough  to  risk  on  one  single 
throw  of  the  dice  the  entire  future  of  their  Western 
campaign,  that  it  should  make  the  strategic  mistake 
of  permitting  our  Commander  in  Chief,  not  so  much 
to  resume  the  offensive  because  the  offensive  had 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  33 

been  decided  upon  long  before  this  mistake  was 
made,  but  to  resume  the  offensive  under  the  best 
possible  conditions,  that  is  what  confuses  me,  that 
is  what  I  do  not  understand — and  they  say  that 
even  our  own  Joffre  himself  does  not  understand  it. 
Perhaps  when  we  know  the  German  explanation  we 
shall  understand  it  better. 

Moreover,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  contest  to  be 
waged  was  not  only  likely  to  be  decisive  but  was  also 
of  a  nature  to  inspire  a  certain  amount  of  confidence 
in  an  army  even  less  presumptuous  than  was  the 
German  army.  In  that  astounding  retreat,  like  one 
of  Turenne's,  which  our  Commander  in  Chief  impos- 
ed upon  the  entire  French  army,  and  the  execution  of 
which  dumbfounded  the  experts,  our  troops  ran  the 
risk  of  losing  some  of  their  most  precious  and  incon- 
testible  qualities.  Subjected  to  unspeakable  fatigue, 
how  could  they  recover  the  fire,  the  dash,  the  "bite" 
of  which  they  had  at  the  beginning  given  such 
proof?  On  the  other  hand,  the  French  soldier  does 
not  like  to  fight  and  retreat  at  the  same  time ;  and  es- 
pecially when  he  does  not  understand  the  reasons 
for  the  movements  ordered,  as  was  often  the  case, 
he  is  likely  to  lose  his  nerve  and  his  courage.  And 
yet  strangely  enough  nothing  like  this  happened. 
As  if  in  the  hands  of  a  skillful  captain  our  national 
temperament  had  received  a  new  stamp,  our  soldiers 
preserved  all  their  confidence  and  all  their  dash  ;  and 
when  on  the  morning  of  the  sixth  of  September  they 
were  told,  the  salvation  of  the  country  was  going  to 
depend  on  their  effort  and  that  they  "should  at  any 


34  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

cost  hold  the  ground  gained  and  be  slain  on  the  spot 
rather  than  retreat,"  realizing  the  full  meaning  of 
these  heroic  words,  happy  at  last  to  be  themselves 
again,  they  turned  upon  the  enemy  with  that  legend- 
ary fury  for  which  we  have  so  often  been  glorified. 

But,  however  great  their  valor,  it  was  to  be  feared 
that  it  would  dash  itself  and  break  upon  a  foe  al- 
together too  fearful.  We  do  not  know  the  exact 
respective  strength  of  the  troops  engaged  on  both 
sides,  but  we  do  know  that  we  were  numerically  in- 
ferior ;  and  it  seems  that  frequently  we  were  forced 
to  fight  one  against  four  or  live.  In  the  second 
place,  and  even  though  since  the  battle  of  Charleroi, 
thanks  to  the  wonders  of  French  manufactories,  we 
had  had  time  to  rill  up  certain  gaps  in  equipment, 
our  armament  remained  inferior  to  that  of  our 
adversary :  neither  in  mitrailleuses,  nor  in  heavy 
artillery,  nor  in  munition  reserves,  could  we  yet 
be  compared  with  him.  Finally,  he  had  that  self- 
confidence  which  comes  from  pride,  skilfully  main- 
tained and  the  intoxication  of  first  victory.  More 
than  ever  our  friends  were  anxious.  Looking  at  it 
rationally,  they  were  right. 

How  did  the  heroic  valor  of  our  army  and  the 
superiority  of  our  generals  and  of  our  light  artillery 
finally  make  our  victory  certain?  This  is  easier 
to  state  than  to  explain.  Mathematically,  if  you 
will  allow  me  to  say  so,  we  ought  to  have  been  con- 
quered. We  are  forced  to  believe  that  in  the  art  of 
war  as  well  as  in  all  other  arts  the  geometrical  mind 
has  to  give  way  before  finesse,  calculation  before  in- 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  35 

tuition,  reason  before  sentiment.  This  army  which 
was  righting  against  the  invader  in  defense  of  the 
native  soil  and  the  genius  of  France  had  a  dif- 
ferent ideal  from  that  which  inspired  that  other 
army  which  was  lighting  for  "honor,"  no  doubt, 
but  also  and  especially  for  the  physical  well-being 
of  Germany — those  are  the  very  words  in  the  Ger- 
man order  of  the  day.  This  French  army  did  not 
have  on  its  conscience  all  those  crimes  against  the 
rights  of  humanity  which  will  be,  in  the  eyes  of 
history,  the  everlasting  shame  of  the  German  army ; 
let  us  pronounce  the  verdict :  it  had  a  higher  moral 
standard.  That  is  why  it  deserved  to  win.  That 
is  why  it  did  win.  Was  it  not  General  Nogi  who 
uttered  that  profound  thought  that  in  every  battle 
victory  comes  to  him  who  is  able  to  hold  out  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  longer  than  his  foe?  It  would 
seem  that  the  victors  of  the  Marne  made  this  their 
motto  and  that  they  wished  to  furnish  a  striking 
illustration  of  it.  Just  when  generals  like  Mau- 
noury,  Foch,  Dubail  with  their  soldiers  decimated, 
exhausted,  assailed  on  all  sides  by  superior  forces 
might  have  lost  courage,  they  nevertheless  persev- 
ered in  their  determination  to  keep  up  the  offensive, 
and  together  with  their  soldiers  were  willing  to  suf- 
fer still  more ;  and  then  it  was  that  they  saw  the 
enemy  disconcerted  and  less  firm,  break  off  the  bat- 
tle and  begin  a  retreat,  which  at  more  than  one 
point  degenerated  into  a  rout.  Let  us  read  once 
more  the  stirring  order  of  the  day  which  General 


36  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

Maunoury,  on  the  day  after  the  victory,  addressed 
to  the  army  of  Paris,  but  which  applies  equally  well 
to  the  whole  French  Army : 

"The  Sixth  Army  has  just  sustained  for  five  whole 
days  without  interruption  or  lull,  the  struggle 
against  the  foe  in  great  numbers,  whose  success 
had  up  to  that  time  heightened  his  morale.  The 
struggle  was  hard;  the  losses  on  the  firing  line,  the 
fatigue,  due  to  loss  of  sleep  and  sometimes  food, 
have  surpassed  the  powers  of  imagination ;  you  have 
endured  everything  with  valor,  firmness  and  endur- 
ance which  cannot  properly  be  glorified  by  mere 
words." 

It  was  truly  an  epic  struggle,  which  in  the  opin- 
ion of  experts  will  remain  numbered  among  the 
five  or  six  great  events  in  our  military  history.  We 
do  not  know  all  the  details,  even  the  important  ones. 
At  most  we  are  able  from  certain  essential  episodes 
to  perceive  the  movement  and  rhythm  of  it.  But 
that  is  sufficient  to  make  us  realize  all  the  bravery, 
obstinacy  and  strategic  skill  displayed  by  the  foe, 
and  the  heroism,  patient  energy  and  military  talent 
displayed  by  our  men.  Privates  and  officers  were 
equally  worthy  of  admiration.  The  privates  have 
been  called  upon  in  the  name  of  their  country  to  do 
more  than  their  duty ;  their  reply  to  this,  went  be- 
yond the  seemingly  possible.  As  for  the  officers  it 
is  impossible  to  say  which  we  must  admire  most  in 
them,  the  initiative  and  dash  with  which  they  fought 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  37 

the  enemy  directly  confronting  them,  watching  his 
every  move,  on  the  lookout  for  any  weakness,  taking 
advantage  of  it  at  the  precise  moment  when  they 
could  profit  by  it ;  or  the  compliant  spirit  and  strict 
discipline  with  which  they  conformed  to  the  in- 
structions of  the  Commander  in  Chief,  scrupulously 
carrying  out  his  plans,  applying  and  developing  his 
thought,  even  forestalling  it  and  submitting  to  it  in 
advance,  in  perfect  harmony  with  him  in  method 
and  intent.  It  was  a  close  and  fruitful  collaboration 
which  brought  to  bear  on  one  and  the  same  object 
all  individual  energy  and  effort  and  which  made  the 
victory  of  the  Marne  one  of  the  most  powerful  col- 
lective works,  the  success  of  which  is  conditioned  by 
the  necessary  utilization  of  many  strong  personal- 
ities. In  our  victory,  what  was  the  part  played  by  a 
Gallieni,  a  Foch.  a  Castelnau,  a  Maunoury,  a  Du- 
bail  ?  We  do  not  yet  know  with  absolute  precision, 
we  simply  feel  that  it  was  considerable  and  that  if 
one  or  the  other  of  these  commanders,  to  mention 
only  those,  had  not  acted  as  he  did,  instead  of  a  de- 
cisive victory,  perhaps  we  should  have  had  to  de- 
plore a  reverse.  Never  before  on  such  a  vast  battle- 
field had  such  powerful  masses  of  men  been  led  and 
manoeuvered  with  such  mastery  by  more  brilliant 
generals,  more  closely  united  and  possessing  such 
thorough  military  science.  The  historians  of  the 
future  will  probably  say  that  the  battle  of  the  Marne 
was  one  of  the  masterworks  of  French  genius. 
We  rejoiced  and  were  proud  on  account  of  this 


38  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

complete  and  incontestable  victory — the  revenge  for 
1870 — for  which  we  have  been  waiting  for  forty- 
four  years — but  our  pride  and  our  joy  were  accom- 
panied by  extreme  modesty  and  rare  selfpossession. 
I  do  not  believe  that  Paris,  at  last  safe  from  inva- 
sion, the  danger  of  which  she  realized  perfectly,  dis- 
played a  single  extra  flag.  Paris  did  not  imitate 
Berlin  which  after  the  battle  of  Charleroi  displayed 
flags  and  bunting  in  frantic  profusion.  The  Prus- 
sian spies  who  may  still  have  been  in  Paris  must 
have  found  it  impossible  to  believe  their  eyes.  Paris, 
nervous  and  throbbing  Paris,  was  silent  in  her  joy. 
Questioned  by  the  civil  authorities  in  regard  to  il- 
lumination to  celebrate  the  victory,  General  Joffre 
replied  in  those  admirable  words,  worthy  of  a  Tur- 
enne  or  a  Vauban :  "No,  our  losses  have  been  too 
great."  And  Paris  was  of  the  same  opinion  as  the 
Commander  in  Chief.  This  race  which  had  been  so 
often  reproached  by  its  enemies  for  its  swagger  and 
bluster  and  which  certainly  does  not  dislike  a  little 
display  looked  on  with  smiling  serenity  at  this  sud- 
den and  complete  turn  of  fortune.  Among  the 
events  of  the  last  ten  months  perhaps  not  the  least 
surprising  has  been  this  spontaneous  transformation 
in  the  national  temperament.  This  complete  ab- 
sence of  exaltation  and  that  self-restraint  main- 
tained in  both  good  and  bad  fortune. 


THE    ERENCH    MJRACLE  39 

IV. 

For  it  was  indeed  during  those  heroic  days, during 
the  battle  of  the  Marne  that  fortune  decidedly  veer- 
ed about,  that  hope  changed  camps,  never  again  to 
abandon  us.  The  moral  superiority,  which  our 
troops  displayed  in  contrast  to  the  opposing  forces 
in  those  bloody  battles,  they  have  not  lost  since ;  in 
fact,  they  are  increasingly  conscious  of  it.  The 
charm  was  broken.  That  formidable  German  army 
which  was  considered  invincible,  because  it  had  con- 
quered us  in  1870  and  which  believed  itself  invinc- 
ible, and  boasted  of  it,  had  just  now  been  beaten  be- 
yond all  expectations.  The  offensive  was  broken ; 
and  whatever  efforts,  even  though  at  times  furious, 
the  German  army  has  since  made,  to  resume  the  of- 
fensive, whatever  partial  success  it  may  have  obtain- 
ed here  and  there,  and  which  could  be  but  tem- 
porary, whatever  success  it  may  yet  obtain,  it  can 
neither  pierce  our  line,  nor  envelop  any  one  of  our 
armies  or  force  us  to  yield  any  considerable  ground. 
On  the  contrary  it  is  the  German  army  which  has 
nearly  always  been  obliged  to  give  way  under  pres- 
sure from  us  and  which  to  offer  greater  resistance 
has  inaugurated  that  system  of  trench  warfare 
which  has  lasted  for  more  than  eight  months  and 
which  we  also  have  been  forced  to  adopt. 

No  system  of  warfare  seemed  a  priori  less  adapt- 
ed to  the  French  temperament,  and  no  doubt  be- 
yond the  Rhine  they  were  counting  on  this  to  tire 


40  THE   FRENCH    MIRACEE 

our  patience  and  to  force  upon  us  what  they  call 
"an  honorable  peace"  but  which  would  have  brought 
little  honor  to  us  and  in  any  case  would  have  been 
singularly  precarious.  Let  us  confess :  We  had 
some  misgivings  with  regard  to  our  soldiers  in  this 
test  of  an  entirely  new  type  of  warfare,  for  which 
they  apparently  had  been  but  slightly  prepared.  A 
French  soldier  does  not  enjoy  digging  up  the 
ground,  any  more  than  he  enjoys  beating  a  retreat. 
Bold  and  brilliant  offensive  warfare,  warfare  of 
swift  and  skilful  manoeuvres,  we  had  up  to  that 
time  considered  his  real  element.  How  little  we 
knew  about  the  elasticity,  the  suppleness  of  the 
French  character,  its  astonishing  powers  of  assimila- 
tion and  adaption ;  in  short,  its  plasticity !  In  a 
very  short  time  our  soldiers  were  able  to  build 
trenches  as  ingenious  and  as  comfortable  as  those  of 
the  Germans ;  peasants,  as  many  of  them  were,  they 
derived  a  certain  pleasure  in  handling  their  native 
soil ;  and,  however  hard  their  life  was  in  the  frozen 
mud.  in  the  rain,  under  fire,  with  that  peaceful 
stoicism,  that  persistent  patience,  that  playful,  mock- 
ing, good  humor  which  flourished  in  our  country- 
side, they  rivalled  their  foes  in  endurance,  and,  fin- 
ally, in  the  war  of  attrition  the  Germans  had  no 
greater  success  than  in  the  other.  The  fact  that  our 
troopers  regretted  sometimes  the  old  fashioned 
French  type  of  warfare  makes  their  abnegation  still 
more  touching  and  more  admirable. 

"Six   months  of  mole-like   warfare  which  lacks 
the    excitement     of     triumphal     marches,     waving 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  41 

plumes,  glorious  battles  won  by  fighting  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  ground,  marching  thrilled  by  music  and 
songs  of  victory !  Six  months  which  are  only  the 
greater  and  more  glorious  because  they  have  torn 
from  the  war  all  her  grandeur  and  all  her  chivalry ! 
Six  months  of  war  waged  against  wild  boars  in 
their  lairs,  whom  the  broad  daylight  and  the  fair 
fight,  with  equal  arms,  face  to  face,  chest  to  chest, 
seemed  to  fill  with  dread." 

These  were  the  words  in  which  a  colonel  recently 
expressed  himself  in  a  private  letter.  We  know 
from  all  the  testimony  coming  to  us  from  the  front 
that  this  mole-like  warfare  has  been  just  as  pro- 
ductive as  the  other  type  of  warfare  in  deeds  of 
heroism,  in  unpublished  acts  of  courage  and  in  sub- 
blime  self-sacrifice.  Moreover,  since  the  battle  of 
the  Marne,  siege  warfare  has  been  the  general 
characteristic  of  the  struggle.  We  know  that  this 
type  of  warfare  has  admitted  of  exceptions  in  which 
much  blood  has  been  shed.  More  than  once  the 
German  armies  have  attempted  to  resume  the  of- 
fensive on  one  point  or  another  of  the  front.  Every- 
where and  always  they  have  found  before  them, 
with  a  command  always  ready,  troops  often  inferior 
in  number,  but  quite  determined  to  allow  them- 
selves to  be  slain  on  the  spot  rather  than  retreat. 
There  is  nothing  more  honorable  to  the  French 
army  than  the  battles  of  Ypres  and  of  the  Yser 
where  our  soldiers  stopped  the  drive  on  Calais  by 
making  of  themselves  an  insurmountable  barrier. 
In  this  war  which  has  brought  about  a  revival  of 


42  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

French  heroism  there  is  perhaps  no  more  glorious 
feat  than  the  defense  of  Dixmude  against  three  Ger- 
man army  corps  by  our  six  thousand  marine  fusil- 
iers aided  by  five  thousand  Belgians.  The  race  of 
valiant  heroes  is  not  yet  extinct  and  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that  our  enemies  will  speak  less  readily 
of  the  decadence  of  the  French. 

We,  however,  if  we  do  not  speak  of  decadence, 
we  may  mention  at  least  the  mad  presumption  and 
the  lack  of  foresight  on  the  part  of  the  Germans. 
From  the  material  point  of  view  they  had  prepared, 
up  to  the  minutest  detail,  for  a  war  which  was  to  be 
a  short  one.  Full  of  confidence  in  brute  strength, 
they  had  entirely  neglected  to  prepare  for  a  war 
from  the  diplomatic  side,  and  in  spite  of  all  the 
warnings  loyally  given,  it  was  a  terrible  surprise  to 
them  to  see  England  intervene  in  the  conflict.  They 
had  outrageously  scorned  all  the  power  of  public 
opinion,  leaving  to  victory  the  task  of  justifying 
their  actions,  as  Maximilian  Harden  said ;  and  in 
spite  of  their  unbridled  propaganda  among  neutrals, 
they  saw  little  by  little  the  public  opinion  of  the  en- 
tire world  turned  against  them.  To  break  all  op- 
position they  relied  on  human  cowardice  and  sys- 
tematically spread  abroad  terror ;  the  only  feelings 
they  have  succeeded  in  arousing,  are  horror,  indig- 
nation, hatred  outspoken  and  avenging  that  cannot 
be  stilled.  They  desired  to  wear  out  the  adversary's 
determination  and  succeeded  only  in  extending  it 
beyond  all  known  limits.  Having  failed  in  their 
brusque    attack    they    endeavored    to   prolong   the 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE  43 

struggle  by  resorting  to  underground  warfare;  and 
they  failed  to  realize  that  in  this  way  they  were 
making  day  by  day  more  and  more  formidable  the 
blockade  which  they  had  been  unable  to  avoid,  and 
that  they  were  giving  to  their  enemies  time  to  make 
up  for  their  lack  of  previous  preparation,  and  while 
they  were  wearing  themselves  out  in  a  futile  and 
inglorious  way,  the  enemy  had  time  to  pile  up  and 
throw  against  them  forces  under  the  weight  of 
which  they  could  not  fail  to  perish.  The  miracle 
of  the  French  victory  has  as  a  counterpart  the  mar- 
vel of  German  stupidity. 

We,  in  France,  as  well  as  our  allies,  knew  how  to 
make  use  of  the  respite,  German  lack  of  prudence 
had  granted  us.  We  were  all  of  us  wrong  to  allow 
ourselves  to  be  surprised  by  a  war  for  which  our 
enemy  had  spent  forty-four  years  in  preparation 
and  planning,  and  about  which  we  had  been  thinking 
not  even  forty-four  months.  In  eight  months  al- 
most all  the  lost  time  was  made  up.  Some  day  we 
shall  know  in  detail  the  prodigious  effort  which  all 
France  expended  in  improvising,  in  inventing  and  in 
action  in  these  ten  months.  Without  underestimat- 
ing, in  the  least,  all  she  owed  to  her  allies,  we  shall 
have  to  confess  that  France  was  her  own  savior. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  war  we  were  in  more  than 
one  respect  much  inferior  to  the  foe;  we  are  now 
at  least  equal  to  him,  often  superior;  and  yet,  his 
factories  and  arsenals  have  not  been  idle  a  single 
day  in  the  last  ten  months.  We  are  told  that  our 
heavy  artillery  is  his  despair  to-day,  just  as  much 


44  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

as  our  field  artillery;  and  if  at  times  our  munition 
reserves  have  been  insufficient  in  the  past,  we  are 
able  now  to  be  as  prodigal  with  our  shot  and 
shell  as  he  was  at  the  beginning  against  us — with- 
out the  fearful  prospect  of  copper  failing  us  some 
day. 

The  foregoing  facts,  which  are  to-day  familiar  to 
every  sensible  Frenchman,  justify  the  lighthearted 
endurance  of  which  our  soldiers  have  given  ample 
proof  in  the  trenches  and  the  patience  which  has 
scarcely  ever  deserted  the  civilian  population  dur- 
ing these  ten  months  of  war  and  invasion;  but 
perhaps  they  may  not  explain  them  entirely.  Rea- 
son and  common  sense  are  ample  proof  of  this 
every  day.  Endurance  and  patience  which  were 
considered  German  virtues  were  not  considered  up 
to  this  time  as  characteristics  of  the  French.  Must 
we  see  in  them  entirely  new  qualities  never  before 
displayed,  sprung  out  of  this  great  crisis  through 
a  sort  of  spontaneous  creation?  Or  are  they  qual- 
ities hidden  up  to  the  present  time  in  the  obscure 
depths  of  the  stored-up  energy  of  our  race  and 
which  had  not  yet  had  an  opportunity  to  manifest 
themselves?  Or  are  the  acquired  qualities  which 
simply  show  how  wonderfully  easy  it  is  for  the 
French  temperament  to  be  transformed?  Whether 
we  choose  one  or  the  other  of  these  hypotheses,  one 
thing  is  certain  and  one  fact  undeniable.  Poorly  or 
at  least  insufficiently  prepared  for  a  frightful  war, 
the  success  of  which  depended  almost  entirely  on 
her  powers  of  resistance,  since  she  was  to  withstand 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  45 

the  first  shock  almost  alone,  France  did  stand  her 
ground ;  she  held  out  with  heroic  vigor,  wily  ten- 
acity, and  unconquerable  patience  on  which  her 
friends  and  we  ourselves  perhaps  at  certain  mo- 
ments scarcely  dared  to  count.  She  has  shown  that 
she  deserves  all  the  admiration  showered  on  her 
in  the  past  and  justified  all  the  hope  placed  in  her 
for  the  future. 

It  is  certain  also  that  France  has  just  lived 
through  an  incomparable  period  of  her  history.  I 
doubt  that  there  has  been  any  more  decisive  since 
the  days  of  Joan  of  Arc.  In  both  cases  the  very 
life  of  the  country  was  at  stake:  "To  be  or  not  to 
be,"  that  was  the  question.  The  critical  point  in 
the  fifteenth  century  was  whether  France  was  to 
be  a  vassal  of  England  or  not  and  in  the  twentieth 
century  whether  she  was  to  be  a  vassal  of  Germany. 
The  second  crisis  was  of  a  nature  to  cause  us  to 
shudder  more  than  the  first.  What  humiliation, what 
a  retrogression,  what  a  downfall  for  a  Frenchman 
of  to-day  to  become  a  German !  If  this  monstrous 
nightmare  had  become  a  reality,  what  Frenchman 
would  have  found  any  joy  thereafter  in  life?  France 
so  clearly  felt  the  full  seriousness  of  this  threat 
that  she  rose  up  to  her  full  grandeur,  filled  with 
indignation,  loathing  and  fright.  Germany  thought 
she  was  going  to  find  another  Poland  to  dismem- 
ber ;  but  she  had  to  deal  with  a  nation  united,  re- 
solute and  under  discipline,  with  leaders  who  were 
obeyed.  All  the  strength  and  trickery  of  Germany 
were  unable  to  break  this  rigid,  living  union  of  de- 


46  THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE 

termined  minds.  Once  more  France  stood  up  as 
a  moral  being  determined  to  live,  worthy  of  life,  a 
being  whose  life  the  world  needs.  For  forty-four 
years  France,  bruised,  humiliated,  mutilated,  fallen 
from  the  rank  of  a  first-rate  power,  no  longer  spoke 
in  the  councils  of  Europe  that  proud  and  generous 
language  which  she  was  wont  to  speak  in  days  gone 
by;  and  the  world  has  been  able  to  notice  that  the 
standard  of  international  morality  had  appreciably 
declined,  and  that  the  great  causes  of  idealism  now 
seldom  found  a  champion.  After  forty-four  years 
the  opportunity  came  to  her  to  give  her  full  true 
measure,  to  take  once  more  with  her  old  prestige 
the  rank  which  an  accidental  defeat  had  made  her 
lose  and  to  reconquer  full  liberty  for  her  civilising 
mission.  France  replied  manfully  to  the  call  of  des- 
tiny. She  accepted  with  serene  and  grave  con- 
fidence the  wager  Providence  gave  her.  She  has 
already  more  than  half  won  that  wager.  Aided  by 
her  powerful  and  generous  allies  she  will  finally, 
while  freeing  herself,  liberate  the  universe  from  the 
hateful  and  brutal  yoke  which  has  been  weighing 
upon  it.  In  that  world  where  for  a  half  century 
force  alone  has  ruled  she  will  strive,  following  her 
age-long  tradition,  to  bring  nearer  the  reign  of  jus- 
tice. She  will  cast  away  that  frame  of  mind  char- 
acteristic of  the  conquered  which  has  been  the  real 
cause  of  her  internal  discord;  the  sacred  union 
which  has  been  her  strength  against  the  enemy  must 
survive  victory. 


THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE;  47 

Oh,  you  young  men,  lying  in  the  plains  of  the 
Marne,  of  Alsace  or  of  Flanders,  you  have  given 
your  lives  heroically  for  that  great  work  of  repara- 
tion, to  create  a  larger  France,  a  France  respected  by 
the  world  and  in  perfect  unity  in  a  purified  Europe 
where  peace  reigns.  This  spectacle  which  you  will 
not  see  we  want  to  last  in  the  world  for  ages.  We 
would  not  be  worthy  of  you,  if  hereafter  by  our  own 
hand  we  tear  ourselves  asunder.  We  ought  not  to 
have  accepted  your  sacrifice,  if  we  were  determined 
to  make  it  of  no  avail  by  our  obstinate  persistency 
in  our  old  and  absurd  quarrels.  No,  your  blood 
shall  not  have  been  shed  in  vain.  We  have  fully 
realized  the  austere  lesson  which  you  have  taught 
us,  for  you  died  united  in  brotherly  love.  We  shall 
continue,  we  shall  complete  your  work.  If  in  spite 
of  grief,  of  misery  and  ruin  we  are  proud  to  have 
lived  through  the  hours  we  have  just  lived  through 
it  is  because  we  are  certain  that  France  in  victory 
will  be  able  to  prolong  the  miracle  of  France. 

( 1 )  Among  the  many  admirable  letters  published,  I 
cannot  refrain  from  citing  here  a  few  lines  from  a  letter 
found  on  the  body  of  Jean  Chatanay,  lieutenant  in  the 
reserves,  killed  at  Vermelles,  October  15,  1914: 

My  Dear: 

I  am  writing  this  chance  letter  because  you  can  never 
tell.  If  it  reaches  you,  it  will  be  because  France  will 
have  needed  me  to  the  very  end.  You  must  not  weep,  be- 
cause I  swear,  I  shall  die  happy,  if  I  must  give  up  my  life 
for  her. 


48  THE    FRENCH    MIRACLE 

My  only  worry  is  the  hard  situation  in  which  you  and  the 
children  will  be  left.  How  will  you  be  able  to  provide  for 
your  own  future  and  that  of  the  children?  Fortunately  you 
are  able  to  count  on  your  old  position  as  teacher  and  on 
full  aid  from  my  people.  How  glad  I  should  be  to  know 
that  some  provision  is  to  be  made. 

I  am  not  disturbed  about  the  bringing  up  of  the  little 
girls,  you  will  bring  them  up  as  I  would  have  done  myself, 
I  hope  that  they  will  be  able  to  make  themselves  independ- 
ent, something  that  I  intended  to  do  if  I  lived.  The  one 
great  difficulty  will  be  Zette,  for  it  will  be  hard,  if  not  im- 
possible for  you,  to  live  in  Paris.  You  will  kiss  the  dear  lit- 
tle ones  for  their  father.  You  will  tell  them  that  he  has 
gone  on  a  long,  long  journey,  still  loving  them,  thinking  of 
them  and  protecting  them  from  afar.  I  should  like  to  have 
Cotte  at  least  remember  me,  and  there  will  be  a  little  baby, 
a  tiny  baby,  whom  I  shall  not  have  seen.  If  it  is  a  boy,  my 
wish  is  that  he  become  a  doctor;  unless,  however,  after  this 
war  France  still  needs  officers.  You  will  tell  him  when  he 
has  reached  the  age  of  understanding  that  his  father  gave 
up  his  life  for  a  great  ideal,  that  of  our  country,  recon- 
stituted and  strong. 

I  think,  I  have  said  what  is  most  important.  Farewell, 
my  dear,  my  love,  promise  me  (hat  you  won't  harbor  ill  will 
towards  France,  if  she  wanted  me  and  all  of  me.  Promise 
me,  too,  that  you  will  console  father  and  mother,  and  tell 
the  little  girls  that  their  father,  however  far  away  he  may 
be,  will  never  cease  to  watch  over  them  and  love  them.  We 
shall  meet  again  some  day,  united  once  more.  I  hope,  with 
Him  who  guides  our  lives  and  has  given  me  near  you  and 
through  you  such  happiness.  Poor  dear  one,  I  have  not  had 
time  to  dwell  long  upon  our  love,  which  nevertheless  is  so 
great  and  so  strong.  Farewell  till  we  meet  again,  the  great, 
the  real  meeting.     Be  strong.  Your  John. 

Jean  Chatanay,  former  Normalien  was  Chief  of  the  En- 
tomological Station  at  Chalons-sur-Marne.  He  was  thirty 
years  old. 


THE   FRENCH    MIRACLE  49 

(2)  Among  all  the  deeds  of  heroism  and  all  the  epic 
words  which  have  been  reported  by  our  soldiers,  I  scarcely 
know  one  more  beautiful,  more  worthy  of  going  down  to 
posterity,  than  the  following: 

In  a  captured  trench,  which  was  being  reconstructed,  a 
shower  of  bombs  suddenly  'hurst;  ten  men  fell,  the  others 
dropped  back  and  a  score  of  Germans  invaded  the  trench. 
Then,  one  of  the  wounded  men  got  up  and  seizing  a  hand 
full  of  grenades,  uttered  this  sublime  cry:  "Arise  ye 
dead !"  At  his  call  three  other  wounded  soldiers  arose, 
and  with  guns,  grenades  and  bayonets  they  struck  down 
half  of  their  assailants  and  forced  the  rest  to  flee. 

The  hero  of  this  deed  is  Lieutenant  Pericard,  author  of  a 
recent  book:  Face  a  Face.  Souvenirs  ct  Impressions  d'un 
soldat  de  la  Grande  Guerre.  Preface  de  Maurice  Barres, 
Paris,  1016.  Another  volume  has  just  appeared  by  the 
same  author:     Ceux  de  Verdun.     Paris,  1917. 


FRENCH  CIVILISATION 

Plus  je  vis  l'etranger,  plus  j'aimai  ma  patrie. — Du  Beixoy. 

Et  plus  je  suis  Francais,  plus  je  me  sens  humain. — Sueey 
Prudhomme. 

To  symbolise  what  seems  to  me  to  be  the  original 
and  fundamental  quality,  the  constant  tradition  of 
French  civilisation,  I  should  not  care  to  seek  a  bet- 
ter expression  than  the  remark  of  a  non-commis- 
sioned Prussian  officer  in  the  novel  entitled  Au  Ser- 
vice de  V Allemagne :  "Ah,  sir,  we  really  must  admit 
the  French  have  more  humanity  than  the  others." 

In  literature  to  begin  with.  Is  literature  the  ex- 
pression of  society?  It  is,  in  any  case,  because  it  is 
the  least  systematic,  the  most  spontaneous  expres- 
sion of  the  peculiar  genius  and  instinctive  tenden- 
cies of  the  people. 

That  there  is  in  French  literature  more  humanity 
than  in  the  other  modern  literatures  would  be,  I 
think,  the  conclusion  of  even  a  superficial  examina- 
tion of  these  various  literatures.  Our  writers  are 
not  such  great  artists  as  the  Italians,  are  less  mystic- 
al than  the  Russians,  less  poetical  than  the  Eng- 
lish, less  philosophical  than  the  Germans,  less  ro- 
mantic than  the  Spaniards  but  how  much  more  hu- 
man !  It  is  of  man  they  think,  first  of  all ;  it  is  man 
in  his  different  moral  attitudes,  in  the  deep-seated 
movements  of  his  nature,  whom  they  strive  to  under- 


52  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

stand  and  describe;  the  questions  which  they  treat 
are  human  questions,  moral  or  social  questions. 
What  they  have  always  in  view  is  the  practice  of  life 
— individual  or  collective — and,  finally,  it  is  man  to 
whom  they  speak,  the  concrete,  the  real,  the  living 
man,  not  the  exceptional,  but  the  average  man, 
whose  language  they  speak  and  whose  approval  they 
seek.  To  instruct,  to  moralise,  in  a  word,  to  hu- 
manise that  is  their  essential  purpose.  We  remem- 
ber what  Bossuet  said  of  the  Greek  poets :  "Homer 
and  so  many  other  poets  whose  words  are  as  pleas- 
ing as  they  are  serious,  celebrate  only  the  arts  that 
are  useful  to  human  life,  breathe  only  the  spirit  of 
the  public  good,  fatherland,  society  and  that  wonder- 
ful civic  consciousness  which  we  have  explained." 
This  might  be  the  very  definition  of  French  litera- 
ture. 

Let  us  make  this  general  impression  clearer.  Let 
us  examine  the  two  great  epochs  of  our  history,  the 
Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries  which  we  are 
in  the  habit  of  considering  as  opposed  one  to  the 
other  and  not  without  reason;  for,  in  truth,  just  as 
the  Seventeenth  Century  loved  order,  rule  and  dis- 
cipline, to  the  same  degree  the  Eighteenth  rebelled 
against  all  authority,  religious,  intellectual  and  polit- 
ical. But,  if,  after  going  beyond  these  undeniable  di- 
vergencies, we.  finally,  come  to  the  bottom  of  the 
matter  we  are  bound  to  realise  that  through  different 
methods  they  affirm  and  pursue  the  same  ideal. 

The  French  literature  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 
was  passionately  curious  about  the  human  soul ;  that 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  53 

is,  it  seems,  its  distinctive  characteristic  which  ex- 
plains not  only  its  own  peculiar  merits,  but  also  its 
weakness  and  shortcomings.  It  has  been  reproach- 
ed, for  instance,  with  having  disdained  nature ;  it  is 
because  it  constantly  concerned  itself  with  man,  that 
it  neglected  all  that  is  not  man.  To  see  living,  with 
the  eyes  of  the  soul,  and  to  present,  exactly,  that 
"marvelously  vain,  shifting  and  changing  creature" 
seemed  to  that  century  a  spectacle  which  made  all 
others  grow  pale ;  a  task  compared  with  which  all 
others  were  but  diversions.  "It  might  be  well," 
said  Pascal,  "not  to  penetrate  too  deeply  into  the 
opinion  of  Copernicus,  but  it  is  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance to  our  entire  life  to  know  whether  the  soul 
is  mortal  or  immortal."  In  like  manner  Racine 
might  have  said:  "Of  what  importance  to  us  is  the 
setting  in  which  the  tragic  story  of  Phaedra  is  un- 
folded? What  interests  us  is  Phaedra's  soul,  how 
she  reacts  against  the  mad  passion  by  which  she  is 
possessed  and  obsessed,  the  shifting  changes  of  her 
moral  consciousness,  and  what  physical  landscape 
can  compare  with  this  paysanc  interieur?"  All  the 
writers  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  held  the  same 
opinion  as  Racine.  All  of  them,  poets,  dramatists, 
orators,  novelists,  philosophers  made  the  human 
heart  their  one  object  of  study;  all  tried  to  encom- 
pass in  their  work  the  greatest  amount  of  moral 
observation  possible.  Hence,  the  wealth  of  psychol- 
ogy in  their  work.  "A  living  psychology,"  Taine's 
celebrated  definition  does  not  apply  to  every  sort  of 


54  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

literature,  but  it  does  apply  most  aptly  to  the  lit- 
erature of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  our  great  classic  writers,  al- 
though very  penetrating,  were  not,  however,  disin- 
terested psychologists.  Knowledge  for  the  mere 
sake  of  knowledge,  even  though  it  were  the  most  in- 
teresting of  realities  is  not  their  ideal.  Their  atti- 
tude toward  man  is  not  at  all  that  of  the  naturalist. 
or  of  the  scientist,  who  observes,  jots  down  facts, 
establishes  laws,  and,  when  this  work  is  done,  thinks 
his  mission  accomplished.  They  are  moralists  as 
much  as  they  are  psychologists.  They  are  not  satis- 
fied with  studying  and  knowing  man,  they  propose 
to  furnish  him  with  a  rule  of  life;  they  wish  him 
to  be  better  and  happier.  From  their  long  journey 
of  exploration  and  study,  they  return  without  any 
illusion  regarding  human  nature;  they  believe  it 
to  be  profoundly  wicked  and  perverse,  a  prey  to 
the  lowest  instincts  and  the  most  wretched  passions. 
To  overcome  these  passions,  to  conquer  these  in- 
stincts, to  set  aglow  in  all  this  wretchedness  a  ray 
of  idealism,  of  virtue  and  happiness,  they  all,  or 
nearly  all,  see  but  one  remedy :  the  acceptance  of  a 
religious  rule  of  life,  the  submission  of  the  whole 
inner  self  to  a  highly  venerable  tradition  which, 
moreover,  had  stood  the  test.  On  this  condition, 
they  believe,  and  on  this  alone,  can  man  be  happy, 
at  least,  in  so  far  as  his  moral  destiny  allows,  and 
store  up  for  his  future  life,  the  infinite  happiness  to 
which  he  aspires. 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  55 

The  writers  of  the  Eighteenth  and  those  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century  are  convinced  that  "man  de- 
sires to  be  happy,  and  the  one  and  only  thing  he 
desires  is  to  be  happy  and  that  it  is  impossible  for 
him  not  to  wish  to  be  so,"  and  similarly  they  con- 
sider this  aspiration  legitimate.  But  instead  of  be- 
lieving with  Pascal  and  almost  all  his  contemporar- 
ies that  "happiness  is  neither  outside  of  ourselves 
nor  within  us,"  but  that  it  is  "in  God,  and  outside, 
yet  within  ourselves,"  they  imagine  that  we  would 
be  perfectly  happy,  if  we  were  free  from  all  the  re- 
straints which  so  many  centuries  of  "superstition" 
have  caused  to  weigh  upon  us.  Not  having  studied 
man  at  any  great  length  nor  with  any  great  depth, 
they  believe  in  his  native  goodness,  they  believe  in 
the  all-powerfulness  of  reason  to  remedy  the  tem- 
porary imperfections  which  they  discover  in  him : 
in  a  word,  they  believe  in  the  progressive  disappear- 
ance of  evil  from  the  world.  Illusion,  perhaps,  but 
a  generous  illusion,  at  least,  in  its  principle,  since  it 
develops  from  an  excess  of  confidence  in  human 
nature.  Having  little  or  no  faith  in  a  future  life, 
holding  themselves  entirely  aloof  from  it,  in  any 
case,  the  writers  of  that  day  bring  to  bear  on  the 
present  life  all  their  thought  and  care;  they  think 
only  of  directing  it  for  the  greatest  happiness  of  hu- 
manity. Since  man  according  to  them  can  depend 
only  on  himself  to  improve  his  destiny,  let  him 
use  all  his  efforts  to  make  it  more  comfortable  and 
agreeable.  Convinced  that  man  exists  only  in  and 
through  society  and  derives  his  value  therefrom,  and 


56  FRENCH    CIVIUSATrON 

that  outside  society  there  is  for  him  no  salvation,  no 
happiness — some  of  them  became  passionate  apolo- 
gists of  the  social  institution.  They  celebrated  with- 
out ceasing  its  blessings  and  its  very  sanctity;  they 
demanded  that  it  should  be  perfected ;  and  they 
were  prone  to  see  in  a  body  of  good  laws  the  sover- 
eign good  which  mankind  might  seek.  Others, 
bolder  or  more  imprudent,  far  from  having  this  in- 
genuous confidence  in  the  rules  and  conventions  of 
society,  attributed  to  them  all  the  evils  which  fill 
with  desolation  the  life  of  man.  The  enemy  for 
them  is  society,  they  dream  of  a  return  to  a  so- 
called  state  of  nature ;  and  already  they  build  up 
for  themselves  a  state  of  happiness  which  makes 
them  weep  with  tenderness. 

Qui  les  fait  pkurcr  de  tendresse. 

These  are,  to  be  sure,  very  different  tendencies, 
very  different  also  from  those  current  in  the  preced- 
ing century.  But  after  all,  it  makes  slight  difference 
whether  Bossuet  has  a  conception  of  a  man  and  life 
which  bears  very  slight  resemblance  to  that  held 
by  Voltaire  or  Rousseau ;  all  three  of  them,  and  their 
literary  contemporaries  are  as  though  haunted  by 
the  obsession  of  this  same  problem,  that  of  happi- 
ness. And  it  is  this  essential  preoccupation  which 
gives  to  the  literary  work  of  these  two  centuries, 
as  to  French  literature  in  general,  that  accent  of 
humanity  which  foreigners  themselves  are  pleased 
to  find  there. 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  57 

Let  us  become  more  definite,  if  possible,  and  take 
a  few  of  the  great  French  masterpieces  which  have 
attracted  the  attention  and  admiration  of  Europe, 
and  let  us  ask  ourselves  what  more  than  any  thing 
else  has  warranted  and  sealed  their  lasting  for- 
tune. 

The  Chanson  de  Roland  is  our  first  national  mast- 
erpiece, incomplete,  no  doubt,  somewhat  crude,  but 
a  masterpiece  nevertheless, in  which,  as  Gaston  Paris 
says,  we  find  for  the  first  time  that  divine  expres- 
sion, "douce  France." 

"Tere  de  France,  mult  estes  dulz  pais." 

This  masterpiece,  during  the  Middle  Ages,  travel- 
ed over  all  Europe.  It  was  taken  into  Spain  and 
Germany  long  before  the  appearance  of  the  Niebel- 
ungen  and  the  Romancero  del  Cid ;  Italy,  England, 
Denmark  and  Iceland  were  acquainted  with  it 
through  numberless  compilations  or  adaptations. 
Xow.  the  real  reason  of  this  universal  renown  has 
been  given  by  a  poet,  Auguste  Angellier,  in  a  work 
too  little  known :  "What  distinguishes  the  Chanson 
de  Roland  from  the  epics  of  all  times."  he  said,  "is, 
that  it  possesses  that  supreme  beauty  which  comes 
from  having  exalted  misfortune  and  being  a  poem  of 
a  noble  defeat  and  a  glorious  death  ....  To  be 
sure,  the  poet  had  no  lack  of  glorious  names,  of  bat- 
tles, and  warriors  ....  I  know  of  nothing  nobler  or 
more  touching  than  that  unique  spectacle  of  a  nation 
which,  though  it  may  cling  to  happy  and  glorious 


58  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

memories,  is  filled  with  enthusiasm  for  suffering  and 
glorifies  a  defeat."  And  that  is  what  all  other  peo- 
ples have  felt  more  or  less  obscurely:  they  read, 
admired,  adopted  our  old  Chanson  de  Geste,  because 
it  offered  to  them  the  generous  example  of  a  higher 
humanity. 

Let  us  go  down  the  centuries.  In  all  our  litera- 
ture there  is  no  work  more  European  than  the  Es- 
says of  Montaigne.  It  is  beyond  doubt  that  outside 
of  France  as  well  as  within  her  borders  men  have 
appreciated  the  incomparable  grace  of  a  style  per- 
petually new.  But  the  work  would  not  have  had 
such  a  unanimous  and  constant  success  if  it  had 
not  been,  before  all  else,  as  Amyot  said  so  well  of 
another  book,  "un  cas  humain  represente  au  vif." 
"Every  man,"  declared  Montaigne,  "bears  in  him- 
self the  form  of  a  man's  condition."  And  it  is  to 
describe  this  "form"  of  general  humanity  that  he 
analysed  himself  with  that  somewhat  sly  com- 
placency which  some  have  judged  to  be  hateful  but  in 
which  most  readers  have  found  so  much  charm.  For 
the  first  time  in  a  work  written  in  the  "vulgar" 
tongue  was  seen  to  appear,  and  develop,  a  soul  en- 
tirely described  as  it  actually  is ;  men  recognized 
themselves  in  it ;  each  one  profited  by  this  rich  moral 
experience  then  placed  at  the  service  of  all.  Men 
admired  that  manner  of  writing  "composed  entirely 
of  thoughts  sprung  from  the  ordinary  topics  of 
life."  In  short,  "men  were  astonished  and  thrilled, 
for  they  had  expected  to  see  an  author  and  they 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  59 

found  a  man."     Never  perhaps,  was  this  famous 
dictum  applied  more  justly. 

A  few  years  pass :  the  classic  literature  comes  into 
being  and  develops ;  the  Cid,  that  immortal  flower  of 
youth,  begins  the  long  series  of  great  tragedies. 
Would  you  ask,  how  the  pure  tradition  of  the 
French  genius  is  here  expressed?  Compare  the 
Spanish  drama  from  which  Corneille  derived  it.  In 
many  respects,  the  Cid  might  be  defended  as  an 
"adaptation"  or  "transformation"  of  the  play,  very 
beautiful,  moreover,  by  Guillen  de  Castro.  But 
how  free  is  this  adaptation,  how  original,  this  trans- 
formation !  A  vast  dramatic  epic,  variegated,  pic- 
turesque, diffuse,  uneven,  full  of  details  of  manners 
and  customs  which  surprise  or  shock  the  reader, 
in  which  improbability  and  bad  taste  flourish  with 
luxuriant  ingenuity ;  such  is  the  Spanish  work. 
Corneille  abridges,  reduces  and  concentrates.  He 
unifies  in  a  strong  stage  action  the  multiplicity  of  in- 
cidents and  episodes.  He  simplifies  the  subject,  the 
intrigue  and  the  style ;  he  brings  the  characters  near- 
er to  us ;  he  analyzes  them  deeply.  He  eliminates 
pitilessly  from  his  model  all  elements  which  are  too 
barbarous,  too  local,  too  Spanish.  He  brings  into 
full  light  the  psychological  and  moral  interest  of  the 
theme  which  he  develops.  In  a  word,  by  every 
means  in  his  power,  he  humanizes  the  foreign  work 
and  the  inner  conflict  which  he  derived  from  it  im- 
pressed itself  not  only  on  all  literary  Europe  but  on 
the  Spaniards  themselves. 


60  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

"Fair  as  the  Cid"  ("Beau  comme  le  Cid"),  Cor- 
neille's  contemporaries  used  to  say.  Speaking  of 
Pascal's  Fensees  the  following  generation  might 
say  with  Madame  de  Lafayette  that,  "it  was  a 
bad  sign  for  those  who  did  not  enjoy  that  book" 
and  posterity  has  to  a  large  extent  ratified  the 
judgment  of  La  Rochefoucauld's  friend.  Now, 
what  is  in  the  Pensees  which  even  today  moves  us 
and  touches  our  inmost  hearts  ?  Strength  and  beauty 
of  style?  Depth  and  boldness  of  thought?  We  are 
certainly  not  indifferent  to  these  qualities.  But 
how  much  more  are  we  interested  and  enthused  by 
the  methodical,  ardent  soul  which  we  feel  throb- 
bing in  these  simple  fragments.  Here  is  a  man — 
one  of  the  most  powerful  minds  the  world  has  ever 
known — who  has  scrutinized  with  a  sort  of  tragic 
anguish  the  problem  of  fate,  and  who,  having  found 
its  solution,  wishes  to  lead  his  fellowmen  to  the 
blessed  convictions  in  which  he  himself  has  found 
the  only  peace  for  his  anxiety.  Fie  reasons,  grows 
tender,  implores,  inveighs,  in  turn.  He  is  not  a 
logician  arguing;  he  is  an  apostle,  almost  a  martyr 
confessing  his  faith  and  desirous  of  sharing  it  with 
others.  "If  these  words  please  you  and  seem  just 
to  you,  know  that  they  are  spoken  by  a  man  who 
went  on  his  knees  before  and  after  to  pray  to  the 
Being  Who  is  infinite  and  indivisible,  to  Whom  he 
submits  his  whole  self  that  He  may  make  you  sub- 
ject to  Himself  for  your  own  salvation  and  His 
glory."  What  an  accent  of  serious  and  manly  ten- 
derness !     Surely,  this  is  one  of  our  brothers  who 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  6l 

suffers  with  us,  who  prays  for  us  and  who  is  ferv- 
ently searching  for  the  truth  with  us!  "Would  you 
have  me  shed  forever  the  blood  of  my  humanity, 
and  you  not  give  even  your  tears!"  These  wonder- 
ful words,  which  Pascal  attributes  to  God,  are  the 
very  words,  we  hear  from  the  lips  of  Pascal  him- 
self on  every  page  of  the  Pensees. 

An  entirely  different  phrase  might  serve  as  an 
epitome  of  the  work  of  Moliere.  "Ah!  Nature! 
Nature!"  cries  the  worthy  Argan  on  seeing  his 
daughter  smile,  as  soon  as  he  spoke  to  her  of  mar- 
riage ;  almost  all  of  Moliere  is  contained  in  that  ex- 
clamation of  admiration.  Those  whom  he  ridicules 
most  gladly  and  with  a  sort  of  vengeful  vim  are 
all  those  who  paint,  disguise,  mutilate,  or  thwart  na- 
ture; bigots,  pseudo-scientists,  jealous  husbands, 
vulgar  upstarts,  amorous  dotards,  blue-stockings 
and  dandies.  How  much  better  everything  would 
move  along  in  the  world,  according  to  him,  if  each 
one  instead  of  trying  to  check  or  correct  it,  simply 
followed  his  instinct.  The  lesson  might  be  danger- 
ous, if,  on  the  one  hand,  it  were  not  accompanied  by 
wise  advice  to  be  moderate,  and  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  did  not  feel,  beneath  the  scoffing  and 
laughter  a  deep  pity  and  great  love  for  the  poor 
creatures  who  are  themselves  the  cause  of  their 
wretchedness.  Moliere  is,  indeed,  a  very  human 
genius.  Even  though  he  has  less  knowledge  than 
others,  even  though  he  has  somewhat  failed  to  un- 
derstand the  highest  regions  of  human  nature,  he 
has  carefully  explored,  described  and  loved  the  aver- 


62  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

age  and  moderate  side  of  human  life.  The  some- 
what unexpected  remark  which  he  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  his  Don  Juan:  ''Here!  I  give  you  that 
for  the  love  of  humanity,"  is  perhaps  one  of  the 
few  rare  expressions  coming,  not  from  the  author, 
but  the  man — one  of  the  few  expressions  which 
the  great  impersonal  poet  allowed  himself  to  utter. 
At  first  sight,  nothing  resembles  the  work  of  Mol- 
iere  less  that  l  Esprit  des  Lois  of  Montesquieu.  And 
still  we  already  find  in  Moliere  certain  tendencies 
which  are  to  reach  broad  development  in  the  work 
of  the  next  century,  in  Montesquieu  as  well  as 
Voltaire.  "Humanity  had  lost  her  rights:  M.  de 
Montesquieu  gave  them  back  to  her,"  was  said  of 
the  Esprit  des  Lois  and  these  words  express  ac- 
curately enough  the  nature  of  the  prodigious  suc- 
cess which  the  book  had  in  its  time.  If  the  essential 
object  of  Montesquieu  in  writing  the  Esprit  des 
Lois  was  to  justify  by  profound  reasoning  the  in- 
numerable laws  and  customs  which  govern  the  var- 
ious communities  of  men,  to  inspire  in  his  readers  a 
respect  and  religious  awe  for  these  venerable  in- 
stitutions, to  spread  the  ideas  of  liberty,  toleration, 
and  justice,  which  must  make  social  life  more  com- 
fortable and  agreeable ;  in  a  word,  to  bring  every- 
thing to  bear  on  the  welfare  of  society,  then,  we 
may  readily  appreciate  that  his  contemporaries  were 
infinitely  grateful  to  him  for  having  devoted  his  life 
to  straightening  and  drawing  more  closely  the  bonds 
which  unite  mankind. 


FRENCH.  CIVILISATION  63 

Almost  a  century  later.  A  new  world  is  forming. 
A  new  poetry  has  come  to  life,  which  found  its  pur- 
est and  most  sincere  expression  in  the  work  of 
Lamartine.  What  the  poetry  of  Lamartine  meant  to 
his  contemporaries  has  never  perhaps  been  better 
expressed  than  by  a  critic  well-nigh  forgotten  today, 
who  was  never  able  to  recall  without  emotion  that 
day  when,  still  a  young  school  boy,  having  by  chance 
bought  the  little  volume  of  the  Meditations  he  found 
therein  "all  the  feelings  of  his  soul,  and  all  the  pas- 
sions of  his  heart,  all  the  happiness  of  earth  and 
the  delights  of  heaven,  all  the  hopes  of  the  present 
and  all  the  anxieties  of  the  future."  And  this 
opinion  of  Jules  Janin  is  not  confined  to  the  French 
and  foreign  readers  of  1820,  for,  between  1905  and 
19 1 4,  in  nine  years,  then,  a  single  Paris  publisher 
sold  more  than  forty-two  thousand  copies  of  the 
Meditations  alone.  We  are  forced  to  believe  that 
for  nearly  a  century  men  have  not  ceased  to  see  and 
love  in  these  verses  of  Lamartine  the  modern  man 
in  his  entirety,  of  whom  the  poet,  while  singing  of 
himself,  traced  for  us  the  ideal,  yet,  natural,  living 
image. 

May  we  not  say  as  much  of  the  novels  of  George 
Sand,  of  all  our  writers  the  one,  who  in  flowing  eleg- 
ance of  style,  in  generosity  of  thought,  and  perhaps 
even  in  moral  temperament  reminds  us  most  of 
Lamartine?  She  wrote  more  than  one  hundred 
novels  inspired  by  widely  divergent  themes,  which 
have  enchanted,  beguiled,  and  consoled  many  gen- 
erations of  readers.    Is  itNquite  certain,  as  is  some- 


64  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

times  said,  that  they  are  no  longer  read  in  our  day? 
We  should  not  be  surprised  at  finding  some  weak- 
parts  in  a  work  so  vast.  But  as  long  as  there  are 
men  who  dream  and  love,  they  will  still  read  these 
books,  I  was  tempted  to  say  poems,  wherein  are  ex- 
pressed with  almost  childlike  fidelity  the  dreams, 
often  contradictory,  the  sentimental  aspirations,  the 
intellectual  and  social  restlessness  of  a  restless  hu- 
manity. 

Mise  au  centre  de  tout  comme  un  echo  sonore. 

(In  the  center  of  all  like  a  full  sounding  echo), 
the  soul  of  George  Sand  was  the  mysterious  seven 
stringed  lyre  of  which  she  spoke  in  one  of  her 
books  and  from  which  only  the  pupil  of  Master  Al- 
bertus  could  draw  magnificent  harmony. 

"All  that  is  of  general  interest  and  all  that  inter- 
ests the  mind  of  man,"  said  Sainte-Beuve,  "belongs 
rightfully  to  literature/'  and  is  not  this  the  very 
definition  or  guiding  principle  of  his  criticism?  The 
author  of  Port  F\n\al  and  the  Lundis  was  infinitely 
curious  about  all  the  forms  and  all  the  shades  of  dif- 
ference within  the  human  soul,  and  from  Pascal  to 
Ninon  de  Lenclos,  including  Jomini,  he  has,  you 
may  say,  filled  up  all  the  space.  That  passionate 
and  ever  alert  curiosity  for  moral  realities  which 
makes  his  work  something  really  unique  in  all  liter- 
ature, while  so  many  other  critics  have  gone  down  in 
indifference  and  oblivion,  is  the  very  quality  which 
gives  him  his  ever  living  interest.  Sainte-Beuve 
has  given  us  a  prodigious  gallery  of  biographical 


FRICNCII    CIVILISATION  65 

and  moral  portraits,  more  numerous,  more  varied, 
more  searching  than  those  of  the  collection  compos- 
ing the  Parallel  Lives.  His  own  individual  work 
was,  likewise,  to  collect  "examples  of  human  life 
minutely  dissected,"'  and  perhaps  some  day  he  may 
be  called  the  French  Plutarch. 

Thus,  in  the  most  diverse  types  of  literature,  the 
loftiest  masterpieces  of  French  literature  are  pre- 
cisely those  which  have  appealed  by  their  human 
qualities  to  the  tender  and  grateful  admiration  of 
their  contemporaries  and  of  posterity.  Humanity  in 
every  meaning  of  the  word  is  indeed  the  character- 
istic of  a  literature  which  ten  centuries  of  uninter- 
rupted productivity  have  not  exhausted.  French  lit- 
erature is  human  because  it  studies  man ;  it  is  human 
because  it  incessantly  provokes  and  places  in  the 
foreground  the  most  important  questions  which  in- 
terest man :  his  happiness,  his  conduct,  his  destiny ; 
and  it  is  human  because  it  is  nourished,  as  it  were, 
"on  the  milk  of  human  kindness."  Homo  sum  .  .  . 
It  might  be  preferable  not  to  recall  the  verse  of 
Terence  so  often  quoted,  which  has  become  com- 
monplace through  constant  repetition.  But,  how 
are  we  to  avoid  it,  if  it  forms,  so  to  speak,  the  motto 
of  the  French  writer? 

And  there,  once  more,  is  the  explanation  of  the 
most  constant  characteristics,  the  most  varied  quali- 
ties of  our  language :  clearness,  simplicity,  and  hon- 
esty. Differing  from  the  Englishman,  or  the  Ger- 
man or  even  the  Italian  who  so  often  write  simply  to 
satisfy  themselves,  to  prolong  their  own  inner  dream 


66  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

of  beauty  or  truth,  the  Frenchman  writes  only  for 
others.  He  believes  that  he  has  something  to  say, 
something  to  say  to  other  men.  Above  all,  he  must 
be  understood.  The  effort  which  is  imposed  upon 
every  mind  wishing  to  communicate  with  another 
mind,  the  Frenchman  takes  almost  entirely  upon 
himself.  He  strives  to  reduce  to  the  minimum  the 
reader's  task.  Instead  of  accepting  his  own  thought 
in  its  natural  unorganized  state  as  it  springs  from 
the  depths  of  his  conscience,  he  subjects  it  to  long  re- 
flection and  concentration,  refining  it  in  such  a  way 
as  to  retain  only  the  most  incontestable  and  most 
impersonal  elements.  He  eliminates  with  jealous 
care  all  that  which,  being  too  particular,  too  individ- 
ual, might  possibly  be  too  obscure  and  appear  un- 
intelligible. Instead  of  clothing  this  residuum  of 
thought  in  the  first  words  which  come  to  his  mind 
he  presents  it  to  the  public  only  after  having  delib- 
erately chosen  from  all  the  verbal  forms  which  he 
has  evoked  and  compared  one  after  the  other,  not 
only  the  elegant,  but  the  shortest,  simplest,  clearest, 
the  most  direct,  the  most  persuasive,  the  one  which 
will  enter  directly  into  the  mind  of  his  reader. 
Boileau  boasted  of  having  taught  Racine  how  to 
write  easy  verses  with  infinite  care.  That  art  is  par 
excellence  the  art  of  the  French  writer.  That  per- 
petual consideration  for  his  public,  that  scrupulous 
deference  to  his  reader,  that  constant  need  of  mak- 
ing his  task  easier,  that  touching  desire  to  teach  and 
not  weary,  to  entertain  and  not  becloud,  to  moralize 
but  not  to  cross  him,  to  be  a  discreet,  kindly  friend 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  67 

to  him,  without  showing  any  haughtiness,  this  sort  of 
spiritual  charity  widely  and  generously  practiced: 
all  this  has  created  in  our  language  a  tradition  to 
which  they  are  but  few  who  are  not  faithful.  It 
is  to  this  tradition  that  we  owe  the  wide  diffusion  of 
our  language  as  well  as  of  our  spirit.  Other  peo- 
ples speak  less  trippingly  than  formerly  of  "the  un- 
iversality of  the  French  tongue/'  but  they  continue 
to  see  in  it — as  quite  recently  the  German  author 
of  J'accuse — the  ideal  language  of  diplomacy  and  in- 
ternational relations,  and  when  a  few  years  ago  a 
Russian  claimed  for  the  French  language  the  honor 
of  being  "the  auxiliary  language  of  the  European 
group  of  the  civilised  world,"  was  not  this  equival- 
ent to  recognizing  in  it  the  very  language  of  civilised 
humanity  ? 

,IL 

However  fruitful  and  brilliant  a  literature  may  be, 
it  is  not  the  only,  nor  even  the  most  important, 
factor  in  a  civilisation ;  religion  and  philosophy  are 
other  factors  more  powerful  and  more  intimate ; 
and  even  though  the  genius  of  a  race  expresses  itself 
perhaps  less  clearly  in  these  more  impersonal  forms 
of  national  activity,  it  reveals  itself  nevertheless  to 
the  attention  of  the  careful  observer. 

To  appreciate  fully  what  constitutes  the  peculiar 
originality  of  French  philosophy,  one  has  but  to 
think  of  the  philosophy  of  a  neighboring  people,  only 
recently,  still  very  arrogant,  whose  baneful  deeds 


68  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

we  are  beginning  to  suspect.  One  could  not  con- 
ceive of  a  more  striking  contrast,  and  first  of  all, 
with  respect  to  the  language.  Whereas,  in  Ger- 
many, the  philosophers — with  the  exception  of 
Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche,  who  were  brought  up 
on  our  literature — manufacture  a  language  barbar- 
ous, pedantic,  all  abristle  with  new  words  and  enig- 
matic expressions,  our  French  philosophers  consider 
it  a  glory  and  a  duty  to  speak  and  write  the  com- 
mon language  of  all,  to  make  their  appeal  not  to 
scholastic  pedants  but  to  the  average  cultivated  man. 
They  are  for  the  most  part  good,  indeed  excellent, 
at  tunes,  even  great  writers.  If  Renouvier  and  es- 
pecially Auguste  Comte  write,  let  us  confess,  rather 
poorly,  if  Descartes  is  not  the  master  of  the  language 
which  we  have  at  times  hailed  him  as  being,  Male- 
branche  is  certainly  a  very  remarkable  writer  and 
though  we  may  be  unwilling  to  place  among  the 
pure  philosophers  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  Lamen- 
nais,  Taine  or  Renan,  can  we  find  in  any  language  a 
greater  writer  than  Pascal?  "Good  common  sense," 
said  Descartes, — and  with  these  words  Le  Discours 
de  la  Metlwde  liegins,  "is  that  one  thing  in  this 
world  which  is  most  evenly  distributed."  This  belief 
all  our  philosophers  have  shared  with  Descartes. 
They  do  not  divide  the  world  into  two  parts :  name- 
ly, philosophers  and  others — that  is,  the  numberless 
mob  of  poor  creatures  who  do  not  "think."  In  their 
opinion,  ever}'  human  being  is  capable  of  reflection, 
of  "thought,"  consequently,  of  receiving  and  judg- 
ing the  truth.     And  it  is  to  the  universal  judgment 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  69 

of  cultivated  minds  that  they  submit  the  results  of 
their  speculations  upon  the  ensemble  and  essence  of 
things. 

Hence,  whereas  in  other  countries  philosophy  re- 
mains the  private  domain  of  certain  specialists, 
even  "professionals,"  with  us.  although  we  are 
not  without  our  pure  philosophers,  philosophy 
is  more  a  part  of  life,  and  penetrates  all  the 
domains  of  intellectual  activity.  It  penetrates 
literature.  Not  a  few  of  our  writers,  had  they  so 
wished,  might  have  been  specialists  in  pure  philos- 
ophy ;  there  is  even  one  of  them,  Taine,  who  was 
a  litterateur  and  a  great  writer  only  in  spite  of 
himself.  More  than  one  counts  among  his  literary 
achievements,  works  of  philosophy ;  for  instance, 
Renan,  Lamennais,  Voltaire  and  Bossuet.  From  the 
works  of  all  or  nearly  all  of  them,  without  mention- 
ing purely  philosophical  ideas  which  they  have  sown 
therein,  we  may  deduce  without  being  arbitrary  a 
"philosophy,"  a  general  view  of  the  universe  and  of 
man,  of  life  and  of  destiny,  which  is  very  coherent 
and  at  times  very  explicit.  Without  any  desire  cer- 
tainly to  transform  Corneille,  Racine,  or  Moliere 
into  profound  metaphysicians,  we  should  be  wrong 
to  see  in  these  three  poets  only  simple  rhymesters 
and  phrase-makers;  they  have  "thought"  just  as 
vigorously  as  many  others  who  "make  a  trade"  of 
philosophy.  Racine's  psychology  is  exactly  that 
which  is  found  in  the  Pensees  of  Pascal,  just  as  Cor- 
neille's  psychology  resembles  in  every  feature  that 


70  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

found  in  Descartes'  Traite  des  Passions.  And  not 
only  Gassendi  but  perhaps  Spinoza  even  would  re- 
cognize himself  in  the  words  of  Moliere.  "Man," 
wrote  Spinoza,  "is  not  in  nature  as  a  state  within 
a  state,  but,  as  a  part  in  a  whole."  and  if  Moliere 
did  not  say  this,  did  he  not  at  least  suggest  it  ? 

Philosophy  with  us  penetrates  science  just  as 
deeply.  Not  only  is  it  a  part  of  the  tradition  in 
France,  much  more  than  elsewhere,  that  philosoph- 
ers by  profession  must  have  a  thorough  and  wide 
training  in  science,  but,  besides,  our  greatest  phil- 
osophers have  been  more  than  simple  men  of  sci- 
ence, they  have  been  great  scientists,  as  for  instance, 
Descartes,  Pascal,  Auguste  Comte,  Cournot,  Claude 
Bernard,  Henri  Poincare.  French  philosophy  and 
science  have  both  profited  equally  from  this  mutual 
interpenetration.  On  the  one  hand,  our  philosoph- 
ers instead  of  building  in  the  clouds,  have  pre- 
served, even  in  metaphysics,  the  excellent  habits  of 
mind  which  are  engendered  and  maintained  by  the 
discipline  of  science  for  they  have  clung  to  reality, 
Method  and  precision  were  not  virtues  foreign  to 
them ;  when  they  speculated  on  nature  and  on  sci- 
ence, they  started  from  positive  concrete  notions 
which  they  knew  by  more  than  mere  hearsay.  On 
the  other  hand,  our  scientists,  on  leaving  their  lab- 
oratories and  mingling  with  the  world  of  general 
ideas,  learned  to  think  and  to  judge  their  science; 
they  were  able  to  give  it  its  proper  place  in  the 
general  scheme  of  things  and  of  human  knowledge; 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  7 1 

they  knew  its  exact  bearing,  and  at  the  same  time 
they  touched  its  limits.  They  saw  clearly  that  sci- 
ence was  not  all  of  man,  and,  that  in  man  even,  and 
outside  of  man,  many  realities  were  beyond  its 
grasp.  In  short,  they  firmly  repudiated  near  sci- 
ence ( scientisme) ,  that  gross  doctrine  held  by  half- 
scientists  or  half-philosophers  which  has  come  to 
us  from  Germany  and  which  consists  in  making 
positive  science  the  only  type  of  knowledge  and  the 
only  rule  of  action.  Our  philosophers  have  main- 
tained the  rational  cult  of  science,  and  this  is  well ; 
they  have  avoided  making  of  it  a  religion  or  a 
superstition,  and  this  is  better  still.  By  freeing  sci- 
ence from  this  servile  superstition,  they  have  done 
the  human  mind  a  service,  the  effects  of  which  we 
are  only  beginning  to  realize. 

The  tradition  of  French  philosophy  has  still  an- 
other characteristic.  It  loaths  rigid  abstract  sys- 
tems, "palaces  of  ideas,''  which  enchant  under  other 
skies  the  dialectic  imagination.  Not,  of  course,  that 
we  are  incapable  of  that.  Descartes,  that  "hero  of 
modern  thought,''  as  Hegel  called  him,  is  as  con- 
structive a  genius  as  Kant ;  and  Malebranche  has  no 
reason  to  envy  Spinoza,  nor  Auguste  Comte, 
Hegel.  Rut  in  the  French  systems  we  find  less  of 
the  arbitrary  and  a  keener  and  more  constant  desire 
to  keep  close  to  reality  and  to  take  it  as  a  model ; 
moreover,  the  systems  of  our  philosophers  are  not 
vast  prisons  in  which  they  shut  themselves  up,  for- 
bidding themselves  even  to  leave  or  look  outside. 
Even  though  they  may  not  contradict  themselves, 


72  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

they  do  sometimes  at  least  try  other  paths,  some- 
what divergent,  they  follow  points  of  view,  they  at- 
tempt modes  of  thought  of  which  the  general  atti- 
tude of  their  minds  gave  no  indication.  Take  Des- 
cartes, for  example,  he  is  considered,  and  with  rea- 
son, the  father  of  modern  rationalism  and  is  be- 
lieved to  have  brought  about  the  triumph  of  a  me- 
chanistic conception  of  the  world  which  long  sur- 
vived him;  and  all  that  is  quite  true.  But 
there  is  in  Descartes  more  than  one  page  that  has  a 
different  ring;  and  the  more  recent  philosophies  of 
liberty,  voluntary  effort,  intuition  which  are  ordinar- 
ily traced  back,  and  very  justly,  to  Pascal,  may  find 
their  origin  also  in  the  author  of  the  Discours  de  la 
Method  e.  And  the  case  of  Descartes  is  not  the  only 
one  in  our  literature. 

The  fact  is  that  most  of  our  philosophers,  just  as 
they  are  unwilling  to  leave  the  solid  ground  of  scien- 
tific observation,  are  equally  unwilling  to  leave  the 
solid  ground  of  moral  reality.  Whatever  may  be 
their  instinctive  preference  for  adventure  in  meta- 
physics, they  are  at  times  able  to  restrain  it  so  as 
to  devote  themselves  to  more  modest  investigation  in 
psychology  or  moral  philosophy.  "What  is  thought 
on  the  planet  Sirius,"  as  Renan  said,  though  it 
may  not  be  absolutely  indifferent  to  them,  is,  how- 
ever, not  their  sole  preoccupation.  It  is  really  in 
man  that  they  are  especially  interested  and  they 
are  attracted  above  all  by  human  problems.  The  hu- 
man soul  is  for  them  an  enigma  more  disturbing 
and  useful  to  solve  than  all  the  enigmas  of  the  uni- 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  73 

verse.  And  to  this  they  always  return.  Now,  by 
studying  unceasingly  this  shifting  and  fleeting  reality 
they  have  formed  of  truth  an  idea  more  flexible, 
less  rigid,  in  a  word,  more  living,  than  the  idea,  the 
rough  outline  of  which  has  been  formed  in  other 
lands  by  pure  logicians.  The  theories  of  our  philos- 
ophers remain  open  for  later  observation  and  re- 
search. They  do  not  presume  to  enclose  the  abso- 
lute therein.  They  leave  to  others  the  task  of  recti- 
fying, of  completing,  of  enriching  their  personal 
conceptions ;  and  philosophy  thus  understood  and 
practiced  has  something  of  the  free  motion  and 
wave-like  continuity  of  life.  Since  they  all  have  the 
feeling  that  the  human  soul  is  something  of  in- 
finite complexity  and  variety,  the  idea  would  never 
occur  to  them  to  proclaim  any  one  national  type 
of  humanity  as  superior  to  all  others  and  propose 
that  it  be  universally  admired  and  obeyed.  On  the 
contrary  it  is  the  coexistence  of  multiple  forms  of 
mind,  each  having  its  inalienable  right  to  existence 
that  they  perceive  to  be  the  essential  condition  of  all 
progress.  French  philosophy  has  always  believed 
in  freedom  and  never  could  it  be  resigned  to  make 
an  apology  of  despotism ;  that  is  one  of  its  most 
constant  characteristics ;  neither  Hobbes  nor  Hegel 
was  a  Frenchman,  nor  Nietzche.  Nothing  is  more 
foreign  to  the  whole  French  spirit  than  the  barbar- 
ous and  immoral  conception  of  the  ''superman."  To 
be  a  man ;  to  be  a  man  as  completely,  as  deeply,  as 
possible;  not  to  emphasize,  not  to  over-emphasize 
human  nature  and,  furthermore,  not  to  degrade  it; 


74  I'RIvNCH    CIVIUSATION 

to  respect  it  in  one's  self  and  in  others ;  to  accept  its 
limitations,  develop  its  powers  and  reconcile  its  con- 
trasts :  such  is  the  ideal  which,  from  all  time,  French 
philosophy  has  made  its  own  and  spread  through- 
out the  world.  Others  are  more  filled  with  mad 
pride — ;  but  is  there  any  other  that  is  more  wise 
and  more  generous? 

It  would  be  simplifying  things  too  much  to  define 
religion  as  the  philosophy  of  the  humble  folk.  But 
it  is  certain  that  the  humble  have  no  other,  and  made 
as  it  is  for  the  humble  as  well  as  for  the  expert, 
religion  translates  in  a  more  spontaneous  and  more 
complete  manner  than  pure  philosophy  the  aspira- 
tions of  an  entire  people.  This  law  so  strongly  es- 
tablished by  Fustel  de  Coulanges  is  verified  in  our 
own  history.  Through  many  vicissitudes  Catholic- 
ism has  remained  our  national  religion.  And  we  are 
forced  to  believe  that  between  Catholicism  and  the 
French  genius,  there  was  a  sort  of  "pre-established 
harmony."  because,  from  the  moment  when  Roman 
Gaul  became  entirely  Christian,  she  has  shown  her- 
self to  be  wonderfully  faithful  to  the  Church.  When 
the  Barbarians  who  invaded  the  land,  Burgundians 
or  Visigoths,  were  inclined  to  Arianism,  she  was 
able  to  escape  this  heresy.  More  than  that,  it  is 
around  the  Catholic  idea  that  national  unity  was 
constituted,  so  to  speak.  If  Clovis  had  become  an 
Arian,  would  he  have  been  so  easily  accepted  as 
king  of  France?  In  any  case,  by  accepting  Cathol- 
icism he  indicated  that  he  had  a  sure  premonition  of 
our  national  destiny ;  and  after  him,  Charles  Martel 


RRENCH    CIVILISATION  75 

and  Charlemagne  would  not  have  succeeded  in 
founding  a  new  dynasty,  if  they  had  not  been  above 
all  the  champions  of  Catholicity.  The  role  of  the 
Church  as  a  civilising  and  moral  influence  was  no- 
where more  visible  or  more  universally  recognized 
than  in  France  during  the  Middle  Ages;  and  France 
during  the  Middle  Ages  rendered  in  her  turn  such 
admirable  service  to  Catholicism  that  she  won,  we 
know,  the  title  "Eldest  Daughter  of  the  Church," 
and  her  kings,  that  of  "most  Christian  kings." 
The  France  of  the  Crusades,  the  France  of  the 
Gothic  cathedrals,  the  France  of  St.  Louis  was  for 
long  centuries  the  great  Catholic  power.  In  the  Six- 
teenth Century  when  a  formidable  religious  revolu- 
tion was  overturning  Europe,  it  was  to  the  tradi- 
tional interpretation  of  Christianity  that  the  land  of 
Calvin  finally  rallied  and  it  is  this  interpretation  that 
she  imposed  on  the  new  line  of  kings.  Finally,  in 
our  own  day  when  "religions  based  on  authority," 
are  so  fiercely  attacked,  good  judges  opine  that  no- 
where, at  least,  in  the  realm  of  ideas  and  of  the  in- 
ner life,  is  Catholicism  as  living  and  as  active  as  it 
is  among  us.  It  is  the  France  of  today  which  fur- 
nishes the  Church  with  the  greatest  number  of  her 
missionaries,  two-thirds  of  the  total  number ;  and 
this  simple  fact  tells  more  than  all  abstract  consider- 
ations. 

But  France  is  not  the  only  Catholic  nation ;  Spain 
and  Italy,  for  instance,  might  also  claim  the  title. 
French  Catholicism,  however,  does  not  resemble 
Italian  or  Spanish  Catholicism.     It  is  to  be  sure  the 


76  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

same  system  of  dogmas  or  beliefs,  but  each  great 
people  puts  its  imprint  on  them  and  develops  one 
aspect  rather  than  another,  according  to  the  disposi- 
tions of  its  particular  genius.  Spain  has  been  es- 
pecially attracted  by  the  mystical  side  of  Catholic- 
ism, the  Italians  by  the  artistic  and  poetic.  France 
sees  in  religion  something  else  and  something  more 
than  a  beautiful  poem  which  men  take  for  truth 
{''un  beau  pocme  tenu  pour  vrai,")  as  Taine  said, 
or  a  means  of  exalting,  purifying,  rendering  sub- 
lime the  individual  soul.  Not  that  France  fails  to 
recognize  the  legitimacy  of  this  two-fold  point  of 
view,  for,  she  is  the  land  of  Pascal  and  of  Chateau- 
briand. But,  in  general,  she  prefers  the  point  of 
view  held  by  Bossuet,  which  is  nevertheless  some- 
what different.  In  the  eyes  of  the  author  of  the 
Variations,  Catholicism  is  above  all  a  social  bond 
{lien  social).  Not  only  does  it  unite  men  of  one 
generation,  one  to  the  other,  by  regulating  their 
mutual  relations,  prescribing  one  and  the  same  ideal, 
and  that  unity  which  comes  from  one  and  the  same 
belief,  but  it  also  links  the  present  with  the  past  and 
the  future,  through  dogma  of  the  Communion  of 
Saints ;  and  thus,  this  grouping  together  of  the  living 
and  the  dead  which  we  call  our  country  (patrie)  in- 
stead of  being  a  simple  verbal  expression  becomes 
the  most  living  of  realities.  And  there  is  more  to 
be  said  on  this  point.  Catholicism  thus  conceived 
does  not  allow  itself  to  be  shut  up  within  national 
boundaries ;  its  dream  is  the  brotherhood  of  man ;  it 
works  for  the  union  of  souls  through  the  unification 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  77 

of  beliefs ;  beyond  racial  differences,  it  wishes  to 
build  the  City  of  God,  which  is  to  bring  together  all 
human  consciences  and  of  which  "Christendom," 
during  the  Middle  Ages  was  but  a  very  imperfect 
model.  Even  though  this  conception  of  Catholicism 
which  has  its  support  in  the  most  authentic  ortho- 
doxy, is  not  peculiar  to  the  French,  it  is  in  France, 
however,  that  it  met  with  the  greatest  favor  and 
that  it  has  been  not  only  adopted  but  practiced 
most  consistently.  The  Frenchman  is  the  least  in- 
dividualistic of  men,  he  is  a  born  apostle ;  he  loves 
to  think  in  communion  with  other  men,  to  propagate 
his  ideas,  to  preach,  to  convert.  Catholicism  en- 
couraged and  utilized  these  deep  instincts  of  the 
race.  A  religion  the  excellency  of  which  did  not  be- 
tray itself  in  the  perfecting  of  social  life,  would 
soon  be  considered  in  France  as  a  false  religion. 

And  this  is  so  truly  the  case,  that  French  irre- 
ligion,  in  its  struggle  against  Catholicism,  has  never 
developed  any  other  objection  nor  found  any  other 
way  to  express  it.  With  what  did  Voltaire  and  the 
Encyclopedists  reproach  the  religion  of  Pascal  and 
Bossuet?  With  being  contrary  to  human  nature,  to 
general  civilisation,  to  the  ''progress  of  enlight- 
enment," to  the  very  laws  of  society.  They  reproach- 
ed, in  so  many  words,  good  Christians  with  being 
poor  citizens.  ''How,"  said  Montesquieu,  "restrain 
by  law  a  man  who  believes  that  he  is  certain  that  the 
greatest  punishment  that  the  courts  can  inflict  upon 
him  will  last  but  for  a  moment  and  open  for  him 
happiness."    Rebellious  to  all  asceticism,  not  realiz- 


78  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

ing  that  the  tendencies  of  human  nature  are  not  all 
equally  good,  and  that  it  is  good  moral  and  social 
hygiene  to  restrain  and  suppress  some  of  them  in 
order  to  permit  others  to  develop  more  freely,  poor 
psychologists  and  mediocre  historians,  "our  philos- 
ophers," dodged  the  evidence:  they  were  unwilling 
to  recognize  the  innumerable  services  which  Catho- 
licism had  rendered  to  civilisation  in  Europe,  of 
which  it  is  one  of  the  essential  factors ;  they  denied 
its  social  value  and  moralizing  action.  But  it  is 
curious  to  note  that  it  is  in  the  very  name  of  "hu- 
manity"— a  humanity  which  Catholicism  had  taught 
them  to  love — that  they  fought  against  Catholicism ; 
resembling  in  this,  as  La  Bruyere  might  have  said, 
"those  sturdy  children  who  have  been  carefully  nur- 
tured and,  then,  turning  on  their  nurse,  beat  her," 
("ces  enfants  drus  et  forts  d'un  bon  lait  qui  battent 
leur  nourrice"). 

The  truth  of  history,  we  know,  is  quite  different 
and  Chateaubriand  in  his  Genie  du  Chris tianisme 
had  no  great  difficulty  in  reestablishing  it  against 
the  last  Encyclopedists.  Certainly,  Christianity  has 
not  transformed  or  renewed  entirely  human  nature 
and  only  too  frequently  has  religion  itself  served  as 
a  pretext  for  an  outburst  of  passion,  in  which  there 
was  absolutely  nothing  Christian.  But,  if  we  invest- 
igate carefully  in  its  origin  all  the  progress  of  a 
social  or  moral  nature  of  which  we  are  justly  proud, 
how  much  of  it  must  we  not  attribute  to  Christian 
influence?  If  we  were  able  by  one  stroke  of  the  pen 
to  strike  out  what  Taine  called  "the  contribution  of 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  79 

Christianity  in  our  modern  society/'  we  should  be 
dismayed  at  the  sight  which  the  world  and  history 
would  offer  to  our  gaze:  "a  den  of  thieves  or  a 
brothel,"  to  quote  Taine  once  more.  That  is  what 
has  almost  always  been  clearly  felt  in  France.  "La 
plus-value  humaine,"  to  quote  the  rather  odd  but 
expressive  words  of  Alexandre  Dumas  his — that  is 
what  French  Catholicism  has  always  had  in  view. 
It  is  more  taken  with  action  than  with  contempla- 
tion, and  with  social  action  more  than  with  individ- 
ual perfection ;  or  rather  individual  perfection  in 
place  of  being  confined  to  itself  and  absorbed  in 
itself,  always  resolves  itself  with  us  into  social  ac- 
tion. Subtle  theological  discussions,  minute  research 
in  exegesis,  over-refinement  of  complicated  devotion 
are  scarcely  our  specialty.  A  rugged,  good  common 
sense  which  goes  straight  to  the  point,  a  simple  faith 
not  without  its  shades  of  difference  but  without  any 
superfluities,  a  very  keen  appreciation  of  moral  real- 
ities, a  great  enthusiasm  for  the  apostolate,  and  a 
real  need  of  communicating  one's  belief,  and  above 
all,  perhaps,  a  desire  for  brotherhood  and  a  sort  of 
passion  for  charity :  these  it  would  seem  are  the 
principal  characteristics  of  French  Catholicism  from 
St.  Martin  to  St.  Louis  and  from  Bossuet  to  La- 
cordaire. 

And  these  also  are  the  features  which  characterize 
in  religious  history  French  holiness.  For  there  is 
a  French  holiness,  just  as  there  is  an  Italian  and  a 
Spanish  holiness.  Although  the  saints  belong  to 
the   Church    Universal,   they   belong   also    to   their 


80  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

country  of  origin,  the  peculiar  genius  and  deep 
thought  of  which  they  express  in  their  own  manner. 
Our  French  saints  do  not  resemble  those  of  other 
nations ;  they  have  in  common,  as  it  were,  a  family 
resemblance  which  is  their  distinguishing  mark. 
However  ardent  and  pure  their  inner  life  may  be,  it 
does  not  turn  them  away  from  practical  action ;  on 
the  contrary  it  closely  unites  them  in  full  harmony 
of  soul  with  that  humanity  which  they  love  and 
whose  salvation,  even  temporal,  they  passionately 
desire.  St.  Bernard  was,  as  it  were,  the  representa- 
tive of  the  Papacy  in  his  day.  St.  Louis  was  the 
best,  most  generously  active,  most  just  and  most 
scrupulously  devoted,  and  most  human  of  all  kings. 
The  more  we  study  the  history  of  Joan  of  Arc,  the 
more  we  are  impressed  by  her  luminous  good  sense, 
by  what  I  should  like  to  call  her  bold  realism.  It  is 
by  quite  different  virtues  and  by  other  dominant 
traits  that  St.  Theresa,  the  great  Spanish  saint  and 
"the  poor  man"  of  Assisi,  the  great  Italian  saint 
appeal  to  our  admiration.  We  shall  not  hesitate 
to  give  them  our  admiration,  but  we  shall  reserve  a 
large  share  of  it  also  for  him  who  through  his 
shrewd  and  firm  reasoning,  his  prodigious  activity, 
his  passionate  love  for  the  humble,  his  inexhaustible 
charity  deserves  to  be  greeted  as  our  great  French 
saint — Saint  Vincent  de  Paul. 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  8l 

III. 

The  genius  of  a  race  is  reflected  in  its  religion  as 
well  as  in  its  philosophy  and  literature,  but  it  im- 
presses itself  upon  the  world  and  is  justified  only  by 
the  grandeur  and  continuity  of  its  historical  role. 
Were  it  not  for  Marathon  and  Salamis,  Greek  civil- 
isation would  not  be  for  us  all  that  it  is  today  and 
Homer.  Aristotle,  and  the  Parthenon  would  not 
have  in  our  eyes  all  their  meaning  and  all  their 
worth. 

Very  early  and  as  though  she  felt  called  to  a  high 
destiny,  France  became  conscious  of  the  fact  that 
she  was  a  moral  person,  and  she  strove  to  realize  her 
national  unity.  Her  first  king,  Clovis,  knew  intu- 
itively what  this  great  country  might  become  over 
which  he  was  called  upon  to  rule ;  he  had  a  very 
clear  conception  of  its  geographical  limits,  made 
every  effort  to  control  and  amalgamate  under  his 
authority  the  different  peoples  who  had  successively 
established  themselves  there  and  to  defend  it  against 
the  new  invasions;  finally,  he  made  Paris  his  cap- 
ital. At  his  death  there  was  a  real  France.  But  the 
France  of  Clovis  was  quickly  dismembered  and  it 
required  long  centuries  and  long  trials  to  reestab- 
lish it.  That  was  particularly  the  patient  and  per- 
sistent task  of  the  third  race  of  our  kings.  Through 
many  vicissitudes,  relying,  moreover,  on  public  senti- 
ment, they  were  obliged  to  reconquer  France  from 
innumerable  petty  French  kings  and  powerful 
neighbors  who  were  always  eagerly  on  the  watch 


82  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

for  our  weaknesses  and  kept  their  eyes  ever  fasten- 
ed on  the  rich  booty  which  they  found  on  our  soil. 
And  the  result  of  their  bravery,  of  their  policy  and 
of  their  perseverance  was  such  that  at  the  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  "La  douce  France"'  had  become  a 
political  reality — the  first  of  the  states  of  Modern 
Europe  whose  unity  is  an  accomplished  fact.  A 
unity,  still  imperfect,  no  doubt,  since  at  the  present 
time,  the  dream  of  our  ancient  Monarchy,  is  not 
realized,  for  we  have  not  yet  attained  our  natural 
boundaries,  although  this  dream  may  be  realized  to- 
morrow. It  is,  nevertheless,  a  unity  solid  and  en- 
during which  may  indeed  increase  but  whose  found- 
ations are  already  firmly  laid. 

To  establish  this  unity  for  such  a  long  time  pre- 
carious and  always  threatened,  many  wars  were  ne- 
cessary, long  and  sometimes  endless  wars.  France 
instinctively,  no  doubt,  since  she  was  the  daughter 
of  Gaul,  but  from  necessity,  also,  has  been  a  great 
military  nation.  She  has  known  and  practiced  all 
kinds  of  warfare;  wars  of  defense  and  wars  of 
conquest,  wars  for  the  balance  of  power,  wars  of 
expansion,  wars  for  hegemony  and  wars  of  propa- 
ganda. But  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  almost  all  the 
wars  that  France  has  provoked  or  sustained  were 
really  defensive  wars,  or  if  you  prefer,  wars  for 
national  unity.  The  Italian  wars,  the  constantly  re- 
curring wars  against  the  House  of  Austria,  the  ma- 
jority even  of  the  wars  of  Louis  XIV  had  no  other 
object  in  view,  for  it  was  a  question,  first  of  all, 
of  completing  or  consolidating  our  unity,  of  driving 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  83 

far  from  our  frontiers  an  enemy  too  powerful  and 
ambitious,  of  forestalling  his  proud  plans,  and  of  re- 
ducing him  to  inactivity  or  powerlessness.  It  is  not 
even  certain  that  preoccupations  of  this  kind  were 
not  in  the  mind  of  Napoleon  and  that  he  always  and 
everywhere  allowed  himself  to  be  drawn  on  by  the 
mere  spirit  of  conquest  and  domination ;  in  any  case, 
his  armies  had  the  conviction,  often  illusory,  that 
they  were  righting  against  the  "tyrants''  and  strug- 
gling for  the  liberty  of  the  world.  Moreover,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  was  not  the  result  of  the  revolution- 
ary and  imperial  wars  the  awakening  of  the  various 
national  consciences  and  the  encouragement  of  their 
aspirations?  And  did  not  Napoleon  himself  begin 
the  unification  of  Germany? 

Thus,  even  when  France  practiced  with  some  de- 
gree of  intemperance  "sacred  selfishness,"  she  had 
difficulty  in  continuing  in  that  direction.  We  must 
insist  on  that,  for  it  is  an  essential  characteristic  of 
her  history.  The  majority  of  the  wars  which  she 
undertook  in  order  to  consummate  or  defend  her  na- 
tional unity  had  at  the  same  time  as  their  object  to 
guarantee  and  to  consolidate  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe.  The  traditional  policy  of  France  has 
ever  been,  not  to  permit  any  one  power  to  acquire 
the  hegemony  of  Europe,  and  thus  to  bring  be- 
neath its  despotic  yoke  other  weaker  states,  to  desire 
independence  for  others  as  she  desires  it  for  her- 
self, to  establish  between  the  respective  forces  and 
ambitions  of  the  diverse  peoples  a  stable  equilibrium, 
to  check  them  one  by  the  other,  to  assure  to  them  all 


84  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

the  free  development  of  their  own  genius,  to  oppose 
any  encroachment,  any  usurpation,  and  all  this  not 
only  for  love  of  peace  but  also  for  love  of  justice. 
This  policy  was  certainly  to  her  advantage  but  she 
was  not  the  only  one  to  benefit  by  it,  and,  in  the 
main,  rare  are  the  victories  of  France  which  have 
not  been  to  some  degree  victories  in  the  interest  of 
Europe.  Let  us  suppose  that  Philip  Augustus  had 
not  been  victorious  at  Bouvines,  the  future  of 
Europe  would  have  been  as  profoundly  modified  as 
the  future  of  France  herself.  If  Joan  of  Arc  had 
not  been  successful  in  her  mission,  France  would 
have  become  English  and,  once  more,  the  cause  of 
the  freedom  of  Europe  would  have  been  singularly 
compromised.  Tf  France  struggled  so  much  against 
the  House  of  Spain  and  the  House  of  Austria,  it 
was  no  doubt  because  such  a  powerful  empire  con- 
stituted for  her  a  constant  danger ;  but,  the  danger 
was  scarcely  less  great  for  the  other  nations  of  Eu- 
rope;  and  the  treaty  of  Westphalia,  while  it  con- 
firmed the  victory  of -French  diplomacy  and  arms 
was  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  the  safeguard  of 
the  rights  of  European  states.  France  was  not  sat- 
isfied with  assuring  to  other  peoples  the  right  to  ex- 
istence; with  her  blood  and  treasure  she  helped  sev- 
eral nationalities  in  their  efforts  to  establish  them- 
selves. The  unification  of  Italy  is  her  work;  and 
even  though  it  may  be  said  that  the  cession  of  Savoy 
and  the  comte  of  Nice  was  liberal  pay  for  our  per- 
sonal sacrifices,  what  material  profit  did  we  gain 
from  our  intervention  in  the  American  war  of  Tn- 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  85 

dependence  and  the  war  of  Greek  Independence? 
Generally  very  careful  to  conciliate  her  national  in- 
terests with  the  general  interests,  European  or  hu- 
man (this  is  certainly  the  ideal  of  the  great  French 
wars),  France  more  than  any  other  nation  is  capahle 
of  abandoning  all  self-interest,  of  consecrating  her- 
self to  the  interests  of  others,  and  as  soon  as  the 
great  ideals  of  justice  and  humanity  are  at  stake, 
no  one  has  ever  appealed  in  vain  to  her  generosity. 
We  should  be  much  mistaken,  were  we  to  admit 
on  the  assertion  of  some  theorists  and  certain 
foreigners  that  our  colonial  expeditions  are  a  stain 
on  the  usual  idealism  of  our  foreign  policy.  First 
of  all,  we  forget  that  the  colonial  wars  are  rather 
far  from  being  wars  of  mere  conquest.  Whenever 
they  are  not  brought  about  by  anxiety  for  the  na- 
tional security,  as,  for  instance,  the  wars  in  Algeria 
and  Tunis,  they  have  been  brought  about  by  serious 
economic  and  political  reasons.  A  great  power, 
which  the  distribution  of  world  territory  would 
leave  unmoved,  and  which  would  refrain  from  par- 
ticipating in  it,  would  soon  see  itself  outdistanced  by 
its  rivals,  and  its  prestige  and  material  prosperity 
would  promptly  decrease ;  it  would  remain  station- 
ary, while  others  would  develop  and  grow ;  it  would 
thereby  consent  to  a  shifting  of  the  balance  of  power 
of  which  one  day  or  another  it  might  become  the 
victim.  Colonial  wars  are  often  wars  of  national 
interest.  On  the  other  hand,  they  are  not  necessar- 
ily unjust  or  immoral  wars;  they  become  so,  only 
the  moment  they  have  as  their  object  the  enslave- 


86  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

ment  of  peoples  of  equal  culture.  Now,  this  is  not 
our  case.  Without  having  the  slightest  desire  to 
divide  men  into  inferior  and  superior  races,  we  may 
rightly  believe  that  the  tribes  in  the  Congo  or  in 
Madagascar  have  remained  for  the  present  at  least 
in  an  inferior  stage  of  civilisation.  It  would  be  a 
strange  paradox  to  give  the  same  weight  to  their 
notion  of  what  native  land  means  as  to  that  of  the 
natives  of  Alsace-Lorraine.  Besides,  it  is  not  a 
question  of  reducing  them  to  slavery,  but  of  taking 
them  under  our  guardianship,  of  watching  carefully 
over  their  real  interests,  of  teaching  them  the  value 
of  a  regular  social  life ;  in  short,  it  is  a  question  of 
raising  them  little  by  little  to  our  own  plane.  We 
repay  them  generously  in  moral  and  social  help  for 
the  wealth  which  we  take  from  their  soil.  In  a 
word,  we  civilise  them,  we  make  them  more  human, 
we  attach  them  gradually  to  a  sort  of  life  which  we 
consider  superior ;  we  do  not  exploit  them.  At  least, 
it  is  always  in  this  manner  that  we,  in  France, 
have  understood  colonization ;  and  we  feel  that  this 
conception  is  sufficiently  altruistic  to  justify  the  ex- 
peditions and  wars  which  we  have  undertaken  to 
realize  it.  It  is  enough  for  the  moment  to  cast  a 
glance  on  our  work  in  Algeria,  in  Tunis  and  in 
Morocco,  to  demonstrate  that  the  reality  of  the 
facts,  in  the  matter  of  colonial  activity,  corresponds 
very  exactly  to  that  ideal  which  we  have  constantlv 
held. 

France  more  than  any  other  modern  nation,  per- 
haps, has  the  right  to  glory  in  this  ideal  which  con- 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  87 

sists  in  not  separating  her  canse  from  that  of  civil- 
isation itself;  has  she  not  caused  it  to  triumph,  by 
aid  of  arms,  on  more  than  one  field  of  battle?  She 
was  not  yet  France  when  already  on  the  fields  about 
Chalons  she  stopped,  as  did  Athens  in  days  of  yore 
at  Marathon,  the  most  formidable  horde  that  could 
have  threatened  our  western  civilisation.  Had  At- 
tila  won,  modern  Europe  would  not  alone  have  been 
submerged  and  annihilated  by  the  brutally  destruc- 
tive invasion ;  but  also  all  the  sentiments,  traditions 
and  ideas  which  Greece  and  Rome  had  bequeathed 
us.  Two  centuries  later,  Christian  civilisation  is 
again  in  peril  through  the  triumphant  invasions  of 
the  Saracen  and  France  again  on  the  field  of  Poit- 
iers saved  the  world  from  the  yoke  of  Islam.  And 
finally,  when  a  few  months  ago,  under  the  onrush  of 
the  new  Barbarians,  all  that  forms  the  adornment, 
moral  refinement  and  pride  of  our  souls  today  was 
threatened  with  eternal  destruction,  France  once 
more  on  the  historic  plains  of  the  Marne  broke  the 
drive  of  the  German  hordes  and  forced  them  to  re- 
treat. An  English  writer  said  eloquently  and  con- 
cisely: *'It  is  the  lofty  and  hard  fate  of  that  country 
to  be  the  guardian  nation" — the  guardian  of  this 
treasure  of  humanity,  of  wisdom,  and  of  experience 
and  morality  which  we  call  civilisation. 

That  is  why  France,  more  than  any  other  na- 
tion, loves  to  battle  for  ideas.  The  Crusades,  those 
heroic  deeds  of  Christian  idealism,  are  not  an  ex- 
clusively French  work ;  but,  it  was  in  France  that 
they  had  their  origin ;  it  was  a  French  monk,  it  was 


88  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

a  French  Pope  who  preached  the  first  Crusade;  it 
was  a  French  king  who  led  the  last  two  and  they 
were  Frenchmen  who  participated  most  generously 
in  them.  The  Frenchman  never  fights  so  well  as 
when  he  feels  that  his  cause  surpasses  him  and  that 
his  material  interest  is  not  alone  at  stake.  To  be 
sure,  he  loves  his  own  country  and  in  order  to  de- 
fend his  native  soil  he  consents  to  the  heaviest  and 
most  bloody  sacrifices;  but  he  is  happy  at  the 
thought  that  these  sacrifices  are  of  profit  to  others 
than  himself  and  his  countrymen.  When  these  sac- 
rifices are  demanded  of  him  not  only  for  his  country 
but  for  the  triumph  of  one  of  those  great  and  gen- 
erous ideas,  humanity,  religion,  justice,  civilisation, 
liberty,  which  raise  man  above  himself  and  merge 
with  his  ephemeral  self  something  of  the  eternal 
laws,  then  he  offers  his  life  with  that  sort  of  mystic 
ardor  which  makes  him  so  terrible  on  the  fields  of 
battle.  The  really  French  wars,  in  truth,  are  more 
or  less  Crusades,  and  this  is  manifest  at  the  present 
moment.  The  Wars  of  the  Revolution  were  wars 
of  national  defense  and  at  the  same  time  wars  to 
spread  revolutionary  doctrine.  The  Volunteers  of 
1792  believed  with  touching  sincerity  that  they 
were  the  missionaries  of  liberty  in  the  world.  Did 
not  the  Legislative  Assembly  declare  that  France 
"was  not  undertaking  the  war  for  conquest,"  and 
later  on,  after  Jemmapes  what  did  the  Convention 
say?  "The  National  Convention  declares  in  the 
name  of  the  French  nation  that  it  will  bring  aid  and 
brotherhood  to  all  the  peoples  who  wish  to  recover 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  89 

their  liberty."  They  speak  of  liberty  instead  of 
speaking  of  the  "tomb  of  Christ" — the  spirit,  how- 
ever, has  not  changed  at  all. 

There  is,  therefore,  no  history  less  narrowly  na- 
tional than  the  history  of  France.  That  is  true  even 
of  the  history  of  her  internal  development.  France 
radiates  her  influence  outside  of  her  boundaries 
through  her  spirit  and  example,  even  when  she  ap- 
pears to  be  absorbed  solely  in  herself.  First  among 
the  nations  of  feudal  Europe  she  conceived  the  re- 
gime of  a  strongly  centralized  monarchy ;  and  this 
regime,  no  sooner  inaugurated  among  us  became  im- 
mediately the  ideal  model  towards  which  all  other 
great  states  turned.  We  in  France  have  never  sought 
to  imitate  Spain,  Russia,  or  Germany.  But  during 
the  Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries,  there  is 
not  a  single  German  princeling  who  did  not  attempt 
to  copy  Louis  XIV.  England,  which  was  to  be  our 
inspiration  so  frequently  in  later  years,  fell,  as  all 
Europe  of  that  time  did,  under  the  influence  of  the 
Great  King.  She  forgot,  if  not  her  language,  at 
least,  her  literature,  and  Corneille  and  Racine  were 
more  admired  in  London  than  Shakespeare.  When 
in  the  next  century,  we  began  to  break  away  from  a 
regime  the  benefits  of  which  we  had  exhausted,  this 
same  regime  was  still  flourishing  at  Berlin  and  St. 
Petersburg:  Frederick  II  and  Peter  the  Great  were 
disciples  of  Louis  XIV. 

In  France,  we  are  accustomed  to  consider  the 
Revolution  of  1789  as  one  of  the  great  events  of 
history,  of  an  importance  equal  to  that  of  the  Re- 


90  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

formation.  But  already,  at  a  very  early  date  that 
same  opinion  prevailed  in  foreign  lands  and  neither 
Kant  nor  Burke  nor  Goethe  nor  Joseph  de  Maistre, 
as  we  know,  were  under  any  illusion  as  to  its  signifi- 
cance. Now,  the  fact  that  a  revolution  purely 
French,  and  one  which  at  the  beginning  had  as  its 
sole  purpose  to  remedy  the  abuses  of  the  old  regime 
and  to  give  a  constitution  to  the  country,  should 
have  produced  this  reaction,  first  of  all,  in  the  mind 
and,  later,  in  the  institutions  of  modern  Europe — 
that  is,  truly,  something  unique  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  Other  nations  have  had  revolutions ;  such  as 
England,  America,  and  Russia.  These  revolutions 
remained  national  revolutions,  thoroughly  local,  con- 
sequently ;  and  their  general  importance  was  scarce- 
ly greater  than  that  of  our  Fronde.  The  French 
Revolution  was  nothing  like  this.  From  the  begin- 
ning, it  passed  beyond  the  frontiers  of  the  land  of 
its  origin.  It  was  not  only  the  Frenchman  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  whom  it  wished  to  free,  it  was 
all  mankind ;  and  it  was  less  than  two  months  after 
the  fall  of  the  Bastille  that  the  Constituant  Assembly 
voted  the  famous  declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man 
and  of  the  Citizen,  August  27,  17^9.  An  historian, 
Edgar  Quinet,  would  have  us  see  in  this  manifesto, 
"the  gospel  of  a  new  era,"  and  that  may  be  an  ex- 
aggeration ;  because,  after  all,  it  was  useless  for  the 
National  Assembly  to  place  itself  "in  the  presence 
and  under  the  auspices  of  the  Supreme  Being,"  for 
there  is  nothing  less  religious  than  the  Declaration 
and  if  it  is  a  gospel,  it  is  a  purely  political  gospel. 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  9 1 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
these  few  pages  changed  the  political  and  social 
mentality  of  Europe,  at  least,  in  those  countries  in 
Europe  into  which  the  French  armies  penetrated. 
Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  the  Revolution  in  the 
course  of  its  development  progressed  in  the  manner 
of  a  real  religion.  Absolutist  Europe  still  half 
feudal,  realized  clearly  the  peril  with  which  it  was 
threatened  by  the  French  Revolution.  And  when  all 
Europe  rose  up  against  the  land  of  the  Declaration 
of  the  Rights  of  Man,  it  was  no  doubt  because  she 
hoped  and  expected  to  share  the  spoils ;  but,  it  was 
also  principally  because  she  had  determined  to  crush 
the  subversive  nation,  guilty  of  having  invented  and 
propagated  a  pernicious  and  anarchistic  doctrine. 
More  even  than  wars  of  self-interest  the  wars  of  the 
Revolution  were  wars  of  principles  and  this  is  what 
gave  them  particularly,  in  so  far  as  they  concerned 
the  French,  their  undeniable  grandeur. 

But  the  French  Revolution  continued  and  pro- 
gressed. Our  two  Revolutions  of  1830  and  184S, 
also,  had  an  echo  throughout  Europe  and  they  pro- 
voked nearly  everywhere  revolutionary  movements 
and  brought  about  the  birth  of  liberal  constitutions. 
This  undoubtedly  means  that  the  Declaration  of  the 
Rights  was  not  a  mere  accident  in  our  national  his- 
tory and  all  nations  in  order  to  be  free  and  realize 
their  deepest  aspirations  were  awaiting  the  word 
from  France  which  meant  freedom  for  them.  Gcsta 
Dei  per  Francos!  There  was  a  time  when  we 
scarcely  dared  recall  these  old  familiar  words  which 


92  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

sometimes,  we  must  admit,  had  too  easily  flattered 
our  pride.  Still,  we  must  fully  recognize  that  these 
words  are  not  absolutely  illusory,  that  France  in  the 
history  of  the  world  has  been  the  source  of  great 
things  and  that  those  who  think  she  was  created  to 
try  on  herself  the  experiments  from  which  the  other 
nations  could  profit,  are  perhaps  not  entirely  wrong. 
The  other  nations !  Yes,  they  have  envied  us, 
fought  us  and  railed  at  us,  they  have  not  always 
done  us  justice;  they  have  not  always  realized  what 
we  had  done  for  them ;  but  they  have  never  hated 
us,  and  more  than  once  they  have  strongly  felt 
"what  France  meant  to  the  world."  When  towards 
the  end  of  August,  1914,  the  German  army  was  ad- 
vancing by  forced  marches  on  Paris,  when,  for  an 
instant,  one  might  have  been  justified  in  believing 
in  the  success  of  the  Pan-German  plan,  and  in  the. 
dismemberment  if  not  in  the  total  disappearance  of 
France,  there  was  in  all  countries  allied  or  neutral  an 
outburst  of  anguish  and  awful  fright.  When,  as  in 
a  flash  of  lightning,  the  world  saw  all  the  work  of 
French  civilization  in  the  past,  it  realized  the  salut- 
ary and  unique  influence  of  that  civilisation,  and  it 
was  with  a  sort  of  terrible  awe  that  it  faced  the  dis- 
tant future  with  the  thought  that  France  could  give 
no  aid.  It  seemed  that  humanity  was  about  to  lose 
that  luminous  and  beneficent  genius  which  for  so 
many  centuries  had  served  it  as  its  guide.  A  volume 
might  be  made  up  from  the  touching  evidences  of 
friendship  which  our  misfortune  evoked  and  which 
our  victory  soon  changed  into  a  warm  outburst  of 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  93 

delight.  In  Spain  and  in  Italy,  in  Switzerland  and 
in  Holland,  in  England  and  in  Russia,  everywhere 
confident  joy  and  hope  revived  followed  the 
gloomy  anxiety  of  those  tragic  days.  We  may  say 
without  boasting:  the  world,  holding  its  breath,  wit- 
nessed an  event  which  was  decisive  in  the  history  of 
the  world,  for  it  saw,  understood,  and  realized  per- 
haps, unknown  to  itself  how  dear  and  how  neces- 
sary France  was.  Just  as  a  friend  whose  smiling 
and  discreet  love  appears  to  us  at  its  value,  only 
when  wc  are  threatened  with  losing  him,  so  France 
about  to  succumb  seemed  more  beautiful  and  more 
worthy  than  ever  of  the  admiration  and  affection  of 
all.  It  was  a  Swiss,  Paul  Seippel,  who  wrote  at  that 
moment:  "We  were  saying  one  to  the  other — if 
France  is  crushed  this  time  what  is  to  become  of 
her?  What  is  to  be  clone  with  that  nation  which  has 
] (laved  such  a  magnificent  role  in  the  history  of  the 
world  and  to  which  we  French  speaking  Swiss  owe 
the  best  of  our  thought0  What  place  will  be  left  to 
her  on  the  face  of  the  globe?  What  role  can  she 
still  play  ?  Who  in  the  world  will  be  able  to  counter- 
balance her  conquerors?"  And  he  might  have  add- 
ed :  "Who  will  be  from  now  on  our  great  teacher 
of  humanity?" 

For  it  is  always  to  this  ideal  that  we  must  return. 
when  we  desire  to  penetrate  into  the  very  heart  of 
French  civilisation.  Tt  is  the  mark  of  the  originality 
of  France  and  it  is  her  mission  also  to  see  all  things 
under  the  aspect  of  humanity — sub  specie  huinau.it- 
alis.     Hence,  also,  that  power  of  sympathy  which 


94  FRENCH    CIVILISATION 

flows  from  her  literature,  her  philosophy,  her  re- 
ligion and  from  her  entire  history.  France  has  at 
times  carried  the  love  of  humanity  to  a  point  where 
it  became  dangerous  to  herself  and  more  than  once 
in  the  course  of  her  existence  she  has  been  the  vic- 
tim and  dupe  of  her  own  humanitarian  tendencies. 
A  glorious  weakness  is  that  which  consists  in  not 
knowing  hatred,  in  not  distrusting  mankind,  in  for- 
getting too  quickly  the  hard  lessons  of  experience, 
obstinate  jealousy  and  unscrupulous  ambition. 
France  has  never  been  able  to  believe  that  force 
alone,  the  force  of  pride  and  brute  strength,  could 
be  the  last  word  in  the  affairs  of  this  world.  She 
has  never  admitted  that  science  could  have  for  its 
ultimate  purpose  to  multiply  the  means  of  destruc- 
tion and  oppression,  and  it  was  one  of  her  old  writ- 
ers, Rabelais,  who  pronounced  these  memorable 
words:  "Science  without  conscience  is  the  ruin  of 
the  soul."  She  has  not  been  able  to  conceive  that  an 
ethnic  group,  a  particular  type  of  mind,  should  have 
the  right  to  suppress  others :  instead  of  a  rigid  and 
mechanical  uniformity  of  thought  and  life,  the  ideal 
to  which  she  aspires,  is  that  of  the  free  play, 
spontaneous  development,  and  the  living  harmony 
of  the  varying  geniuses  of  the  nations  of  the  world. 
A  world  in  which  flourished  the  systematic  and  un- 
reasoning abuse  of  brute  force,  pedantic  formalism, 
bureaucratic  haughtiness,  fatuous  and  so-called  sci- 
entific ugliness  and  a  taste  for  the  "Kolossal"  would 
seem  to  her  the  most  hateful  of  hells.  What  others 
call  Kultur  she  calls  by  its  true  name,  Barbarism. 


FRENCH    CIVILISATION  95 

In  contrast  to  this  barbarism,  the  more  barbarous  be- 
cause scientific,  French  civilisation  stands  out  clear- 
ly, trait  for  trait,  in  constant  opposition.  France 
means  liberty,  lovable  grace,  a  sense  of  proportion, 
courtesy,  discretion,  refinement, — France  means  in- 
dulgence, pity,  charity, — in  a  word,  France  means 
humanity.  If  she  should  disappear  from  among  the 
nations  of  the  world,  human  life  would  lose  some 
part  of  its  nobility  and  beauty. 


THE  m»y 


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